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Republicans who've availed themselves of lame duck sessions of congress before are now loudly objecting to the idea of Democrats holding a lame duck session. This is often described as "hypocrisy" but I actually think it isn't.
Something I really like and respect about Republican members of congress is that on issues of political process they maintain an admirable level of consistency. Their view is something like "one should do whatever one can within the bounds of the law to ensure that the right substantive outcome happens." So if holding a lame duck session produces more conservative policy, they hold one. But if stigmatizing a lame duck session would block progressive policy, they stigmatize. It seems to me that this is how politics ought to be done. No country has competing political coalitions organized around rival views of process issues, they're organized around rival views of important questions of substance. One problem with the structure of American politics is that we only have one team that plays this way. But the fault for that lies with the Democrats, who it seems to me have a tendency to not take their own jobs and ideas seriously, rather than with Republicans.
Politics in a democracy isn't a blood sport. We don't kill members of the other side or intimidate them with violence. But it's not a parlor game either. It's serious stuff, and it deserves to be taken seriously. Republicans do a good job of that, and their approach to process "hypocrisy" merely reflects the fact that they have a reasonable sense of priorities.
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