OK, so the situation with the stimulus bill seems to be this: Obama is trying to work with the Losers (ie, Republicans) to make the bill acceptable to their anti-tax, anti-women, anti-common-sense agenda. Then, the House Republicans plan to vote against it anyway. The Oz-like illusion of We’re All In This Together that Obama is trying to create will be exposed by the little bitches of the GOP. Republicans are so used to running the show that their only definition of bipartisanship is getting everything they want, when they want it.
So, what the Dems should do: if the Republicans are all voting No on a bill that was watered down to get them to vote Yes, the Dems should use whatever parliamentary maneuver is necessary to stop the vote. Then reintroduce the original, unfucked-with bill, and pass that. If one side makes concessions to get the other side to go along, and that side still won’t go along, why bother with the concessions?
There is absolutely NOTHING to be gained by playing at bipartisanship with these loons.
On the upside, maybe Obama can get them drunk and get some good blackmail photos.
I agree. Obama and the Dem folks who supported Obama’s calls for bipartisanship need to wake up and realize that the word “bipartisan” doesn’t exist in the Republican vernacular.
Yes. Also though, the dems need to avoid the (admittedly delicious) temptation to exclude the republicans completely, the way the republicans did to them when they controlled congress.
Seriously, this immature fighting between both parties is annoying as hell.
Obama is like the dad driving the car and yelling at his democratic and republican kids in the back to “knock it off or so help me I’ll pull this car over and leave you both on the side of the road.”
Chicago Fan is right.
Time to make CEOs pay and benefits above the $1 million a year level non-deductible, for example.
If they want to play hardball, rocket it back right in their faces.
Further, the “Not OK with Republicans” stimulus package should be called something like “The Republicans are Losers and Pedophiles Act.”
The moderate Republicans were all voted out of office. Does no one get that? All that is left in the house are hard-core right-ists from white trash states. I don’t want to play nice with these Republicans. I want them to leave my country.
What the fuck is wrong with you people? There’s plenty to be gained. For example:
If the stimulus package has a lot of popular support, structure it to emphasize non-doctrinal issues and push it to the front of the news cycle, then scream as loudly and for as long as possible that the GOP is stonewalling it. Make sure that everyone who’s getting laid off knows that the GOP is keeping them from getting extended unemployment benefits and so on. Scapegoat them like they scapegoated the Dems for so long.
But.
If you do it after a genuinely bipartisan effort, it gives Republican moderates the opportunity to unseat incumbents later on by running on a, “I would have voted for the stimulus package,” platform. This results in a slight leftward shift in the ideological center of the Republican party, rather than the radicalizing of the Democratic party that the Republicans created by being such dicks for 8 years.
Or you can just be the new dicks, same as the old dicks, and things can swing back to an even more radicalized GOP in six to eight years.
As I said in a similar comment thread yesterday re: the stimulus package, this can easily be accomplished when the House & Senate conference committees get together to hammer out a final compromise bill.
If the GOP in either house fail to support the bill on anything close to a party-line vote, then any of the provisions that were changed to get them on-board in the first place can be changed back to the original; if one or two GOP members cross the aisle and vote in favor of the bill in their respective chamber, they can be “rewarded” by keeping in a few provisions that might appeal specifically to their constituents, so long as these don’t adversely affect any of the major provisions supported by Democratic voters.
It would be a win-win for Obama: he’ll have shown a commitment to bi-partisanship by being willing to make changes the GOP sought, but since they voted against the bill anyway, even with the requested changes, they’ll have nothing to complain about after the fact without looking like the completely douchey hypocrites they’ll in fact be.
How about sending your suggestions to the White House using this: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/? See if their claim that “President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history. To send questions, comments, concerns, or well-wishes to the President or his staff please use the form below:” is really true.
Look, I don’t think Obama is infallible, but what does the man have to do to demonstrate he knows a thing or two about how to make the sausage? Let him do his thing and see how this plays out, not just with this bill but with the next one and the next one. He’s making decisions about how to navigate through a Congress that the Democrats do not have full power to ram through anything they want.
Maybe he is doing it wrong but I don’t see how you can say that at this early stage. Definitely I don’t see how you can say he ought to play every card he has on this one bill. What about Iraq? And Gitmo? And Afghanistan? And health care? And so on?
This “stimulus” package is nothing more than a Great Leap Forward to socialist tyranny, and I strongly support Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives who are courageously standing up to Barack Hussein Obama’s attempt to create a Marxist paradise.
The brutal truth is we either fight Socialism now, or within a few years we will be fighting this tyranny in the streets. I sure am glad I got my guns when I did.
Everyone must sacrifice a little. This will be a long and hard fight.
The stimulus plan will fail just as it did for FDR. The economy will limp along until we cut taxes on small business and investment much like GW Bush did in 2003.
The Democrat Party has moved to the far left, and their Socialist ideology is un-American.
To the extent Barack Obama’s policies are Socialist, I hope he fails. To the extent he is like Reagan, I support him and hope he succeeds.
I strongly urge right thinking Americans (as well as disloyal Marxist/socialist/liberals to follow Rush Limbaugh’s advice and tell them how much you love un-American, anti-capitalist Socialist tyranny.
Click here:
http://www.dccc.org/page/s/contact
Load Basil,
Love your irony. Keep it up man
@5: I like the way you think.
@9, where were you when the Bush administration gave out billions in Corporate Welfare? How is it that is not socialist? If we make the rich richer, that’s fine. But give the little guys a little help and it’s suddenly socialism. How many years does it take for that trickle down to actually trickle down?
For the folks that are worrying about the Dems capitulating to the Repugs: “Listening” to the R’s is not the same as “working” with the R’s is not the same as “caving” to the R’s. COMTE has it right @6 above.
The White House’s legislative crew knows exactly where the votes are right now. The fact is that the Bill working it’s way through the House now is the Democratic Bill, minus some porky line-items that were pretty obviously not stimulus to begin with (dollars for Washington Mall rehabilitation). Most of this post-partisanship stuff, including the visit to the Hill etc are symbolically important to the country right now, because most people are sick of the shit that occured out of the White House over the last eight years.
Relax and smell the stimulus. It might even pay for a few projects out here in our neck of the woods.
Find a new meme. The Dems in Congress were the majority on the TARP and Obama voted for and advocated it. We’ve got no traction on this issue. Bring that up to an actual Republican, they’ll smash you flat, write you off and use you as an example of Dem hypocrisy when they’re talking to their drinking buddies during a bowl game.
@14,
Right, because the Bush administration was Democratic.
@15
What the hell are you talking about?
I thought Lord Basil had been relocated to GITMO already …
But a lot of good points by everyone else.
@5: for the win!
@14, you didn’t answer the question at all. Is it not hypocritical that getting a bailout when you’re rich is OK, but getting a bailout when you’re poor is socialism? Let me try again with smaller words: I am rubber, you are glue, what you say bounces off me and sticks to you!
I’m glad I got my guns too, LB, but probably not for the reason you think.
Okay, so the stimulus package has passed the House, and – surprise, surprise – not a SINGLE GOP member voted in favor.
Not a one. Zero, zilch, nada.
177 GOP members, 177 votes against (in fairness, 11 Dems also voted against).
Can’t wait to see what happens when the Senate vote comes up, which I presume will happen next week. If we get the same or similar results as the House vote, then I think Obama can effectively write-off the Repugs, and the Dems can go their own way, since it will be clear at that point that the GOP has absolutely no interest in bi-partisanship whatsoever.
Repeat after me:
It is 1977 in America. (again)
Jimmy Carter.
One and done.
Ushered in the Reagan Revolution.
Obama has 4 years to screw it up.
Pass a Democratic ‘dream team’ stimulus plan and he won’t need that long.