It’s been said over and over this election cycle that strange bedfellows and alliances have formed that would’ve seemed completely insane just a year ago. “Strange new respect” is uttered a lot by lefties about Glenn Beck and by righties about Bill Maher.

What caused all of these new friendships was the climactic explosion of a problem that had been building for years. A problem that was so pervasive and all-encompassing that while we knew it existed, we were too buried in it to understand how much damage it was causing.

The problem was hyper-partisanship.