Obstructionist is obstructing for the sake of obstructing
What exactly does "obstructing for the sake of obstructing mean".
It could literally mean obstructing for its own sake, but no sane person would try to obstruct everything, or everything coming from outside of themselves, or even everything from outside groups they are tightly affiliated with.
It could mean saying no to whatever the other party does, even if you would actually like the policy to pass, which would be obstructing for the sake of perceived partisan advantage, or obstructing because of dislike of who you where obstructing, which while not exactly "obstructing for the sake of obstructing" is close enough that I wouldn't really object to that term, and probably not to the use of the word "obstructionist". But I don't see much of that happening. It plays some role in all of these recent controversial debates, but not I think a very large one.
It could mean obstructing even though you know you can't win for some reason of principle. But that IMO would be very far from "obstructing for the sake of obstructing", and would not be IMO a bad thing.
Or it could mean obstructing a good idea, but that's begging the question as to what is a good idea.
Generally I don't like the word obstructionist much, because nay definition I can think of would either, be a rather unusual event (which would be fine if the word was then used very very rarely, but it gets used for more than just the rare things in the first couple of definitions), or involve actions that are perfectly ok, and don't fit in with the connotations of the word obstructionist.
In practice I think "obstructionist" is effectively too often used to mean "someone who opposes what I want to do". |
