It’s not as if he didn’t try.

President Barack Obama, who rode into the White House on a wave of intelligence and idealism, apparently thought that he could get his Republican compatriots just as fired up about using the government to fix the U.S. economy as they were when it came time to use it to fund an unnecessary war in Iraq.

Obama worked them. Had ‘em over for cocktails. Cookies. Pared the original stimulus package of more than $900 billion down to $787 billion – to add more tax cuts, the equivalent of ideological crack for the GOP, and to remove some spending that won’t create jobs right away.

Yet when it came time to vote on passing the stimulus, the Republicans barely spared the brother a crumb.

Not a single House Republican voted for the bill. Not even one from Florida – where the mortgage crisis has all but paralyzed construction and tourism, has sent the unemployment rate to 8 percent, and where people in some communities are lining up for free bread. Not even one from Mississippi, still the nation’s poorest state and a state that could use the infrastructure projects included in the bill, seeing how Hurricane Katrina ravaged much of its coast three years ago. Not even one from Georgia, where layoffs abound and 113,000 jobs could be created by it.

Nope, nope, nope, they said. The bill was too costly. 

As if the government’s spending to help get the economy moving isn’t that much different than what the GOP would prefer people do to fix it: To spend money. Problem is, unemployment is lurching toward 10 percent. People are losing jobs like a crack addict loses weight.

They don’t have it to spend.

As if the Republicans, who controlled Congress while George W. Bush turned a surplus into a deficit, and presided over eight years of orgy-like spending, have any moral authority to now raise up against any effort crafted to undo the crisis that they saw coming – and did nothing to thwart.

But no matter.

Obama may not have won bipartisan cooperation. But he did get the stimulus passed. Doing that, in and of itself, was a Herculean feat for any president who has been in office for only three weeks.

He should feel proud. And he should stop obsessing over bipartisanship. The fact that not a single Republican on the House side and only three on the Senate side supported the stimulus after his administration made numerous compromises to meet them halfway tells me that they do want Obama to fail – and they’re not beyond making the American people suffer even more to see to it that he does.
 
How could they not?

Obama is, after all, a young black man who defied every low expectation that they had for him. During his presidential campaign, he defied their attempts to use his charisma and articulateness to paint him as shallow. He used that same charisma and intellect to reassure voters about who he was after conservative talking heads and assorted speakers at the GOP convention tried to otherize him; to scare voters not only about his lack of executive experience, but for what they believed was his lack of Americaness.

Obama wasn’t supposed to win.

But when he did, his victory – as well as the victories of scores of Democrats – basically trashed the GOP’s legitimacy. It left their party in shambles and embarrassed. Now they say they’re looking to rebuild. But it looks like the only way they know how to do that isn’t through innovation, but through intransigency.

To be sure, there’s a legitimate concern about the impact that massive government .....

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The fiscally conservative rhetoric by the GOP serves no real purpose right now because they had the opportunity for this while Mr. Bush was in office. Do they have the best interest and well being for the average American as a part of their agenda? If the majority of the American people can not see what the GOP stands for then we will see more of this nonsense. Political posturing and stalemates don't help those who have lost their jobs and homes because of insurmountable debt.
http://www.divalocity.blogspot.com

by   
Divalocity
February 18, 2009, 11:17 am
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The fiscally conservative rhetoric by the GOP serves no real purpose right now because they had the opportunity for this while Mr. Bush was in office. Do they have the best interest and well being for the average American as a part of their agenda? If the majority of the American people can not see what the GOP stands for then we will see more of this nonsense. Political posturing and stalemates don't help those who have lost their jobs and homes because of insurmountable debt.
http://www.divalocity.blogspot.com

by   
Divalocity
February 18, 2009, 11:17 am
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Obama did his part, and he should keep trying to work with them. The more the Republicans act a fool, the more it will harm THEIR constituents, hopefully the voters will see the light and vote these arrogant boneheads out of office. Unfortunately many of these representatives serve people with their ideology, they would rather suffer than to accept change. Even if its good for them.

by   
Ladykym
February 18, 2009, 11:04 am
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