The “Stim”

The final (probably) stimulus bill passed the House today with no Republicans votes, and it is expected to pass in the Senate this evening with three Republican votes. Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin write in The Politico that

Emboldened by his victory on the stimulus package — but chastened by the pothole-pocked road that got him there — -President Barack Obama and his aides are plunging ahead on a large and expensive agenda that virtually assures 2009 will be marked by intense partisan battles about the size and role of government.

OK, so the GOP does nothing but say no, so the bill will be passed without them. And since it’s clear they are not going to participate in government, as opposed to playing partisan games, the President and his team are going ahead and doing what they want to do, and the hell with the Republicans. There’s nothing to be gained by offering them concessions. But Allen and Martin say it’s the President and his team who will virtually assure future intense partisan battles. OK.

I’m hearing Rachel Maddow point to a Republican congresswoman who said she didn’t vote for the stimulus bill because it included improvement on mass transit infrastructure. Republicans hate mass transit. Mass transit is socialism, you know.

Meanwhile, Charles Mahtesian writes for The Politico that Republicans have been emboldened by Judd Gregg’s withdrawal from the Commerce Secretary nomination.

… the New Hampshire senator’s surprise decision to remove himself from consideration as President Barack Obama’s commerce secretary Thursday has provided the GOP with a new rallying cry, and a new hero against a foe who just a few weeks ago seemed almost unassailable.

Uh, as a “victory” Gregg’s flip flop doesn’t even qualify as symbolic or moral. It’s just odd. And I doubt the American people give a bleep. The Republicans in Congress are becoming a weird roll-playing cult. I bet they all have fantasy personae and cool costumes. They meet in basements and play a game in which they pretend to be legislators.

19 thoughts on “The “Stim”

  1. Politico is run and staffed by right wing hacks who can’t get a job in a legitimate news organization. Every time really good reality-based blogs such as you and Josh Marshall quote them, you give them a legitimacy they don’t deserve. They should be banished to the same insanity-based island with Michele Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly. However, you made a statement that I think is the essence of what happened and what we all should be shouting from the housetops. Obama doesn’t need the Republicans to pass anything!

    Off topic: Jimmy Carter was on Countdown and wonderful as usual.

  2. …earlier, when I read that Politico post, I realized that I had before me the final puzzle piece that completed that huge one thousand-piece challenge to the whole idea that the Republican party as now constituted represents a meaningful voice in today’s reality. Disputes about tax cuts aside, any effort to portray Gregg’s ejection as some sort of Republican “victory” is a profound demonstration of the simple fact that what passes for the Republican party has lost its anchor and is hopelessly adrift in a storm it doesn’t really understand…

    The MSM is locked into some twisted sort of Pavlovian death-hug with those Republican ‘leaders’ who were their supposed patrons over the last eight or more years, so – even though the truth is out there (great tag for a TV show, eh?) – we are going to hear lots about the putative “victory” that Gregg’s withdrawal or his stonewalling about his sudden change of heart represent…

  3. I seem to remember that any bad news over the last two years was always spun as good for the Republican party. These people have to look victorious even when sh*t is dripping from their faces. They’re nothing but self-deluded idiots, constantly trying to suck others into their phony hype.

  4. “I have but one prayer; Lord make my enemies rediculous.My prayer has been granted”
    The repugs are behaving like very bad children.They insist on polishing the furniture as the house burns to the ground.
    I was down in Ft. Meyers last week when Obama flew in, the interstate was shut down for a while making me quite late in getting to Naples.I could not go to see Obama because I was on “the clock”.
    Naples is a VERY wealthy town on Fl.’s SW gulf coast; many waterfront mansions, many Bentleys and Land Rovers, and three pages of forclosures in the local paper.
    Most of the population is either retired or working in the service industry, and things are getting VERY bad.
    I love to read the opinion section of the Naples paper, It makes me wonder how Mme. Aintoinette and her court must have thought just before the Jacobins changed things a bit.
    From Kipling, to Orwell, to Voltaire, and now Robespierre.”To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.”

  5. Chastened? I kind of doubt that. He got the votes, he got public opinon And public approval of his handling of the thing, the GOP is looking bad to everyone who isn’t them. What’s to be chastened about?

  6. Dutchess County in New York (where I now live with my parent’s) was once a county that featured IBM, machine shops and small farms. Now IBM hires on only contractors. There are no machine shops. And the small farms have been turned into condo’s or strip malls.
    Dutchess County was once a solid Republican district. Hamilton Fish served in the House for something like 142 years.
    Dutchess County voted Democratic this past year. Not as shocking as Fayetteville, NC, where I used to live. But don’t tell that to the people who’ve lived here a long time – they’re shocked that it happened.
    If Fayetteville, NC and Dutchess County, NY vote for Democrat’s, that tells you how relevant the Republicans are today.
    And they prove how irrelevant they are each and every new day. Like the vote on the stimulus. They are like the firefighters in Nero’s Rome who decided not to help fight the fire. “Let’r burn to the ground. Maybe it’ll be better…”
    The Republican Party now seems to appeal only to the criminally insane, the racist, the sexist, the anti-gay, the anti-progressives, and the Luddite’s. Sadly, there are a lot of those people around. But, they are, thankfully, a dying breed.

  7. Hamilton Fish served in the House for something like 142 years.

    I don’t doubt that. There seem to have been about five generations of Hamilton Fish who worked in government somehow. Do you know if there’s a current Hamilton Fish anywhere?

  8. Folks :
    Make no mistake about this plan..It will benefit China Indai and Mexico more that America. There are no provisions that require US citizens to be employed. We will buy Chinese made computers running Indian written software and administered by Mexicans. Every nail,hammer,saw,drill, boot, sock,shirt etc will be made in China. These energy efficient cars will be made by Toyota and the profits will go to Japan. Not one manufacturing , computer software etc job will be created for US citizens. In the end we will still import 1000s of baseball players , workers , h1 visa and not employ US citizens.

  9. And when the “stimulus” plan fails, you Democrats will own it lock, stock, and barrel. Have fun with that!

    Nah, the original plan was watered down considerably to please Republicans. So we can still blame you Republicans if it fails. (See, we’re learning your tricks!)

  10. maha,
    Our new NY Senator took his old district – or part of it, anyway. So, no Fish’s left that I’m aware. Hamilton or otherwise.

  11. If you are up to it, explain how infrastructure jobs could be sent offshore. Thanks much.

    Well, it’s it obvious? The Mexican-Hindu-Chinese alliance will make mechanical workers called Cylons, which the US will import and use as slave labor until they rebel and kill us all.

    Jesus, maha, didn’t you get the memo?

  12. And when the “stimulus” plan fails, you Democrats will own it lock, stock, and barrel. Have fun with that!
    I am still flabbergasted that the House Republicans all voted against a very large tax cut package. This is just weird.
    And, why are we paying the salary of House Republicans? They could be replaced by a dumb “No-Bot” that voted no 188 (?) times for every vote. Seems like a reasonable cost-saving measure.

  13. Thom Hartmann laid out the GOP playbook quite nicely. One of the problems is that the stimulus will not lead to some marked uptck in employment but rather make the overall job losses “not so bad.” Unless media and others show some new found tendency to listen to economists the GOP will just say “See it did nothing, we still lost jobs” and when the downward spiral ends they will claim that nothing Obama and Dems did had any effect.

    Even this talk about size of government is a red herring that distracts from the problems at hand. The entire debate has an air of unreality to it. By wrenching the dialog towards abstractions they needn’t keep it rooted in terms of the actual damage they have wrought. They don’t even need to posit solutions themselves because the abstract debate takes precedence. Then when economists reach soem consensus ti doesn’t matter whether it will or not because if government plays any role at all in the solution it assumes a function that makes it bigger than if it played no role at all. Then, since size of government is the most important thing there can be no solution. So the logic goes, round and round in circles.

    After witnessing such mind-numbing circular logic one wants to ask them to demonstrate a solution since they appear to offer none.

    But didn’t they demonstrate solutions to problems for 8 straight years?

    Too bad media such as Politic is willing to engage only at the level of ideological abstraction rather than concrete results. Their small government talking points are not ends in themselves and can only be justified in terms of results.

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