Yes, the Democrats won. Yes, they have the power. Yes, they can essentially do whatever they want. But they are so brazen. They say they want to end partisanship, yet no Republicans are allowed in the conference committee. They promise to set the final bill before public eyes 48 hours before the vote, then they reneg on the promise. They have decided what they want and, by God, they're going to have it, regardless what it takes to get it. And they do it all right before the cameras. Right in front of everyone. How utterly brazen they are!
Two things can be said about this remarkable legislative behavior. First, the Democrats have obviously learned from Bill Clinton that the public has a short memory. They know that they can flaunt their power and ignore public opinion, yet have total confidence that in a short while no one will remember (at least not enough will remember). Of course, the cover they get from the obsequious press corp helps to make this happen. Second, in a sense they are showing admirable leadership, which the Republicans could use a lesson in. These Democrats know what they want, have the power to do what they want, and are not about to let public opinion or the oppostion stop them. This is our Republic in action. No member of Congress is required to listen to his constituency. He is only required to exercise his best judgment in behalf of his constinuency (no matter how loony his judgment may be). Furthermore, we tend to admire those leaders who stay the course, even when the public is crying out for a new direction. The Republicans had power for six years and squandered it by reaching out and trying to bring the other side into the process. The Democrats are smart enough to know that in the end, it doesn't matter who seems to be magnanimous and who voted for which bills (a 61-39 vote is just as good as a 99-1 vote); it only matters that their agenda gets enacted into law. I hope the Republicans remember this down the road.
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The principal argument in favor of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending extravaganza seems to be, "The people want us to do something." This agrument presupposes that there is parity between all the various "somethings." We are expected to recognize that any old "something" is just as good as any other. But what this really is, and what has now become patently obvious, is a deceitful ploy designed to obfuscate the actual contents of the bill. So much for Obama's promise of openness.
Yes, Dave, I think the Republicans will remember.
In fact, Rush was talking about this subject a day or two ago. He points out that "moderate" Republicans have been getting defeated in the polls for several years; as Rush puts it, why vote for a democrat-lite when you can vote for the real thing? The result is that the Republican ranks, although reduced, are increasingly made up of stronger, more principle-based leaders. They'll take the democrats' lessons in governing to heart, for sure.
Meanwhile, I wonder if the public is being fooled by the Obama talk about the need to put aside "petty bickering" and partisanship and just DO SOMETHING! I don't think they are. The vast majority of people in the country - yes, even those without ivy league degrees- understand that you have to do the right something . . . and that doing something! anything! for its own sake is a mistake.
My hunch is that Obama and the democrats are hurting themselves very badly. I think the public increasingly understands that this huge spending bill is not a "stimulus" package but an attempt to use a genuine crisis as an excuse to hijack and reshape much of society in a Euro/leftist image. . . all while avoiding meaningful policy debate these measures call for. The entire exercise, in other words, is dishonest in the extreme.
The bill, of course, will go through; but to repeat something I suggsted a few days ago, the republican leadership needs to create a "porkulus" watch, reporting on some new outrage from this bill every week. And they need to do a "job count" watch," reporting each month on the number of new jobs created vs. the cost. They need, in short, a truth squad that hammers, hammers, hammers away at the attempted socialist coup.
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