All partisans have attended the "party of no" —or aligned with it, more accurately.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer reached for the old attack on Monday. He railed against Republicans as the "party of no," as my colleague, Kyle Trygstad, records in an article today. In a 30-minute address to the Center for American Progress, Hoyer said:

One of our two great parties is now an organization committed to an unprecedented level of lockstep opposition to the president … A 'party of no,' whose political strategy is an investment in failure for our country and paralysis for its institutions.

This year, many a Democrat has tossed the "obstructionist" grenade. And many a Republican has shrugged.

But, lest we forget, Republicans once decried the "Party of No" as a no no. And Democrats have too been in on the party. Including, that is, Hoyer's boss Nancy Pelosi.

In June 2005, I wrote an article for Salon headlined, “Just say no.” I interviewed Pelosi for the story. An excerpt:

[Democrats will] "absolutely" run on their refusal to capitulate to Republican policies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., declared in an interview. But compared with the Republicans of 1994, she said, "We have a stronger case."

The story's lede recounted 1994:

Half a century ago, Republican Sen. Robert Taft said the duty of the opposition was to oppose. Republicans were arguing the same line in 1994. Two months before the midterm elections that year, a bitter game of legislative chicken had ensued. The Republicans were filibustering a campaign-finance bill, one of the few items standing on President Clinton's legislative agenda. Amid an all-night session, as cots were set up and the theatrics began, Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell was frustrated. His party controlled Washington but couldn't pass meager campaign-finance reform. The Republican minority, Mitchell lamented, was "unprecedentedly obstructionist."

Come Election Day 1994, the obstructionists prevailed. Republicans took control of the House for the first time in four decades, and the Senate for the first time in eight years. More than a decade later, Democrats are borrowing from the Republican playbook.

Now Republicans are borrowing from the Democratic playbook, or an earlier Republican playbook—the attack is so very cyclical and in Beltway form, so very hypocritical.

Minority parties love the filibuster until they are a majority party. And in this same vein, the "party of no" branding is bad, but parties will still be bad. The reason, as every minority party knows, obstructionism often works. After all, it indeed worked out for Democrats in 2006.

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