Likewise, how many bills has Obama passed without giving into all Republican demands in exchange for nothing? The TARP that they helped him pass then lambasted him for signing? The carbon copy of the Bush stimulus bill they passed unanimously but pilloried when Obama duplicated it? Do you contend I'm misrepresenting the facts? That Bachman wanted to investigate Obama for anti-American associations when he was a Senator, or that she's only running 2 or 3 points behind Romney in most GOP presidential polls? Yeah, I think Republicans are mostly (though not exclusively) in the wrong here, but you tell me:

1) Am I accusing anyone of anything they didn't do?
2) Am I misrepresenting their actions as anything save what they were?

If the shoe fits, wear it, and if you don't like how it chafes that's your fault and not the cobblers for picking the wrong one.

To be fair, a lot of the change is in the Senate specifically; the House has often been little better than a kindergarten since at least as far back as the Civil War, but in a way that's the problem: These days the once calm, deliberative and (dare I say it) statesmanlike Senate seems anything but. On the rare occasions a Senator does buck the party line it can earn him the fate of staunchly conservative Bob Bennett, who lost his job essentially because he didn't mark in lockstep with a GOP he supported 90% of the time. A lot of recent retirees (and this is what makes it most striking) were or are in no danger of defeat, but left anyway, specifically citing DC partisanship. I waited for a Republican Congressman to condemn Bachmanns thinly veiled accusations of treason against Obama the way Margaret Chase Smith condemned fellow Republican Joe McCarthy in the '50s. That moment never came; instead, Republicans may nominate her to run against him for the presidency. I'll leave it with the linked article in which Evan Bayh, in many ways the poster child for such Senators, remarks on doing just that two years ago; pay particular attention to his comments about a bipartisan debt reduction commission that was stillborn because people who'd supported it refused to vote for it because of (according to Bayh) purely partisan reasons.