So Much for Bipartisanship
A new Gallup poll shows that most people think things are the same or worse when it comes to partisan strife in our government.
Oh well, it was nice to believe in hope and change, but any hopes of bipartisanship died last Thursday when President Obama's stimulus package failed to get a single Republican vote in the House. They didn't need a single Republican vote, of course; the Democrats have such a large majority in the House that they can pretty much do whatever they want. However, since President Obama made the effort to meet with Republican leaders to try to get their help on matters, this was unacceptable, so immediately, the attacks began again.
MoveOn.org started running ads against Republicans, pretty much telling their constituents, "Your Congressman doesn't want you to have a job." Oh, and of course many liberals promptly recycled their lines about "the failed policies of the last eight years."
Funny thing is that one of those Republicans targeted by MoveOn and company was Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire... who was tapped days later by President Obama to be his new Commerce secretary. Oops.
The Gregg appointment has Republicans everywhere holding their breath and crossing their fingers. You see, the governor of New Hampshire is a Democrat, and if he really wanted to, he could appoint that all-important 60th Democrat to the Senate that would make the Senate filibuster-proof and turn the Congress into a Democrat steamroller. Supposedly a deal is in the works... but after everything we had to go through in the past month or two with Blago in Illinois, do we really want to hear about any kind of "deal" being struck involving an open Senate seat?
Senator John Kyl of Arizona, however, would suggest that the Congress is already behaving like a Democrat steamroller. Republicans were completely frozen out of the process of crafting the stimulus package bill in the House; after all, their votes weren't needed to pass the thing. The prevailing wisdom for the Democrats, according to Kyl, is "we won, get out of our way." Yeah, that sounds really bipartisan, doesn't it? That's really "Change We Can Believe In", huh? I don't fault Obama in this, really. He's doing what he wanted to do, at least TRY to change the tone in Washington, but it's hard to do that when your own party's leaders in Congress won't buy what you're selling. And as the days pass and the Senate vote on the stimulus package grows closer, Obama seems to be falling into line and repeating the mantra that we have to pass this now or else. Isn't this the same thing we heard with the bailout package? It really feels like we're getting force-fed our medicine; you can understand it if people resist, that's just human nature.
Along those lines, the process has been slowed down enough that people have actually been able to read about some of the junk that is in the stimulus package and have fought back. In fact, very little of the bill seems to be about what we want most of all: for people to have jobs. Unless, of course, you want a job with the government. Ahhhh, that's how it works, we save or create 3 million jobs by either keeping businesses afloat with government handouts or creating a massive amount of new government jobs. The Republicans, of course, want more in the way of tax cuts, arguing that it would create more jobs and create them faster. Not sure about that if all it will do is reinforce the policy of get $300 tax rebate, spend $500, get $200 deeper in debt that was the mantra of Bush economics. This of course is not to be confused with the Democrats' conception of Bush economics: all tax cuts, even the ones that go to the middle-class, are really going to the rich... and that didn't create any jobs. Wait, didn't we create millions of jobs during the Bush presidency? Oh I see... all the lost jobs are pinned on Bush so it's a wash.
These lost jobs include the ones at New Process Gear here in Syracuse. The company that owns the plant (which has been around since 1888 and just a couple years ago employed 3000 people) ran it into the ground. They swore they would reinvest but workers argued that it was a pipe dream, and when Magna came back to them and said, "Accept more concessions or we're closing the plant," the workers overwhelmingly said to close the plant. It's a sad situation, a casualty of the dead SUV market caused by $4-a-gallon gas prices in the past couple years. But when a local UAW rep spoke today, who did he promptly blame? Bush.
Of course, because President Bush told a Canadian company to mismanage the place and of course is solely responsible for high gas prices because of all his oil buddies. Right. Good to see that Bush Derangement Syndrome hasn't been completely wiped out... of course many have just segued to the hot new disorder: Palin Derangement Syndrome.
So the Senate is working on trimming $100 billion from the stimulus package in the hopes that it will peel off a couple of Republicans... because it's a given that all the Democrats will vote for it, so they need to get to 60 somehow. Then it will go to the conference committee where much of the $100 billion might come back, it will fly through the House again with zero Republican votes, go back to the Senate where the Democrats hope they'll have their 60 votes by then with Franken winning in court and the NH governor going back on his "deal" and sail through easily. But not without more partisan bickering and not without both sides returning to their ideological corners and turning this back into being about nothing more than power.
Because that's what it is. Why else would people really care if no Republicans voted for the stimulus in the House? Because MoveOn and its ilk are now concerned with one goal: permanent one-party rule in Washington. And the Republicans of course want to regain power in Washington, so their leaders will map out the best course of strategy to get them there, which so far involves kow-towing to right-wing talk show hosts. I won't name them here; they love hearing their names mentioned too much as it is. Of course Obama didn't help things much when he publicly called out a certain talk show host and brought the spotlight back to this guy who had just managed to earn national scorn for hoping Obama failed as president.
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Oh well, it was nice to believe in hope and change, but any hopes of bipartisanship died last Thursday when President Obama's stimulus package failed to get a single Republican vote in the House. They didn't need a single Republican vote, of course; the Democrats have such a large majority in the House that they can pretty much do whatever they want. However, since President Obama made the effort to meet with Republican leaders to try to get their help on matters, this was unacceptable, so immediately, the attacks began again.
MoveOn.org started running ads against Republicans, pretty much telling their constituents, "Your Congressman doesn't want you to have a job." Oh, and of course many liberals promptly recycled their lines about "the failed policies of the last eight years."
Funny thing is that one of those Republicans targeted by MoveOn and company was Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire... who was tapped days later by President Obama to be his new Commerce secretary. Oops.
The Gregg appointment has Republicans everywhere holding their breath and crossing their fingers. You see, the governor of New Hampshire is a Democrat, and if he really wanted to, he could appoint that all-important 60th Democrat to the Senate that would make the Senate filibuster-proof and turn the Congress into a Democrat steamroller. Supposedly a deal is in the works... but after everything we had to go through in the past month or two with Blago in Illinois, do we really want to hear about any kind of "deal" being struck involving an open Senate seat?
Senator John Kyl of Arizona, however, would suggest that the Congress is already behaving like a Democrat steamroller. Republicans were completely frozen out of the process of crafting the stimulus package bill in the House; after all, their votes weren't needed to pass the thing. The prevailing wisdom for the Democrats, according to Kyl, is "we won, get out of our way." Yeah, that sounds really bipartisan, doesn't it? That's really "Change We Can Believe In", huh? I don't fault Obama in this, really. He's doing what he wanted to do, at least TRY to change the tone in Washington, but it's hard to do that when your own party's leaders in Congress won't buy what you're selling. And as the days pass and the Senate vote on the stimulus package grows closer, Obama seems to be falling into line and repeating the mantra that we have to pass this now or else. Isn't this the same thing we heard with the bailout package? It really feels like we're getting force-fed our medicine; you can understand it if people resist, that's just human nature.
Along those lines, the process has been slowed down enough that people have actually been able to read about some of the junk that is in the stimulus package and have fought back. In fact, very little of the bill seems to be about what we want most of all: for people to have jobs. Unless, of course, you want a job with the government. Ahhhh, that's how it works, we save or create 3 million jobs by either keeping businesses afloat with government handouts or creating a massive amount of new government jobs. The Republicans, of course, want more in the way of tax cuts, arguing that it would create more jobs and create them faster. Not sure about that if all it will do is reinforce the policy of get $300 tax rebate, spend $500, get $200 deeper in debt that was the mantra of Bush economics. This of course is not to be confused with the Democrats' conception of Bush economics: all tax cuts, even the ones that go to the middle-class, are really going to the rich... and that didn't create any jobs. Wait, didn't we create millions of jobs during the Bush presidency? Oh I see... all the lost jobs are pinned on Bush so it's a wash.
These lost jobs include the ones at New Process Gear here in Syracuse. The company that owns the plant (which has been around since 1888 and just a couple years ago employed 3000 people) ran it into the ground. They swore they would reinvest but workers argued that it was a pipe dream, and when Magna came back to them and said, "Accept more concessions or we're closing the plant," the workers overwhelmingly said to close the plant. It's a sad situation, a casualty of the dead SUV market caused by $4-a-gallon gas prices in the past couple years. But when a local UAW rep spoke today, who did he promptly blame? Bush.
Of course, because President Bush told a Canadian company to mismanage the place and of course is solely responsible for high gas prices because of all his oil buddies. Right. Good to see that Bush Derangement Syndrome hasn't been completely wiped out... of course many have just segued to the hot new disorder: Palin Derangement Syndrome.
So the Senate is working on trimming $100 billion from the stimulus package in the hopes that it will peel off a couple of Republicans... because it's a given that all the Democrats will vote for it, so they need to get to 60 somehow. Then it will go to the conference committee where much of the $100 billion might come back, it will fly through the House again with zero Republican votes, go back to the Senate where the Democrats hope they'll have their 60 votes by then with Franken winning in court and the NH governor going back on his "deal" and sail through easily. But not without more partisan bickering and not without both sides returning to their ideological corners and turning this back into being about nothing more than power.
Because that's what it is. Why else would people really care if no Republicans voted for the stimulus in the House? Because MoveOn and its ilk are now concerned with one goal: permanent one-party rule in Washington. And the Republicans of course want to regain power in Washington, so their leaders will map out the best course of strategy to get them there, which so far involves kow-towing to right-wing talk show hosts. I won't name them here; they love hearing their names mentioned too much as it is. Of course Obama didn't help things much when he publicly called out a certain talk show host and brought the spotlight back to this guy who had just managed to earn national scorn for hoping Obama failed as president.
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Labels: politics
posted by Dave | 8:39 PM
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