January 30, 2009

1/30: The Battle Intensifies

The House GOP caucus's unanimous rejection of Barack Obama's economic stimulus bill has certainly energized the conservative blogosphere. Righty bloggers are stepping up their efforts to persuade Senate GOPers to vote against the bill. Michelle Malkin has thrown her support behind the RedState/#dontgo "Send a Pair" campaign, which seeks to pressure Senate Min. Leader Mitch McConnell into opposing the bill by bombarding his office with "golf balls, novelty items...or real items such as various 'dried scrotum' products found in grocery stores." Conservative bloggers are also buzzing about a new Rasmussen poll indicating that support for the stimulus bill is dropping. Righty bloggers view this poll as evidence that the GOP is winning the media war (incidentally, lefty bloggers also believe that GOP opponents of the bill are winning the media war).

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers continue to press the argument that Obama should stop trying to negotiate with congressional GOPers and instead pass whatever bill he thinks will be most effective. Lefty bloggers believe that congressional GOPers "should be written out of negotiations" because they're (allegedly) only interested in undermining Obama's efforts to turn around the economy.

In non-stimulus news, many liberal bloggers are excited about reports that Obama is considering asking Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) to serve as Commerce Sec., since Gregg's replacement could potentially give Dems 60 seats in the Senate. However, other lefty bloggers are warning their colleagues not to rejoice too much.

STIMULUS: Hold The Line, GOP Senators!

Righty bloggers are urging GOP Senators to follow the lead of House GOPers in forcefully rejecting the stimulus bill:

• RedState's Jeff Emanuel: "Call your Senator and tell him or her not to abandon the House GOP on the Front Lines of the current battle for Congress and for America's future. The Democrats have enough votes to pass this and every other rotten item on their agenda without Republican help. Let's make them do it -- and, through that, make them own every single negative outcome that results from their awful policies."
• Malkin: "Conservatives have several staunch advocates in the Senate, but not nearly enough. You will recall that GOP Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Jan. 4 made strangely positive noises about the Generational Theft Act of 2009 -- prompting many on the Right to wonder if he had lost his, um, parts. RedState and #dontgo have come to his aid with Operation Send A Pair. No, not socks. Erick Erickson explains the campaign and asks for your help here."
• RedState's Moe Lane: "[T]he House GOP's decision yesterday to Hold The Line has seriously disconcerted the Democratic Party. They're in a position where they've got an increasingly-unpopular bill to carry, and they're willing to do anything to pass off some of the load...except let Congressional Republicans hack away at the accumulated special-interest pork. [...] In a very real sense, we won this round Wednesday night: the only question is whether McConnell and the rest of the Senate GOP have the guts to go for the bonus points. If they need a stiffener, remember: only 42% support. 50% of independents oppose."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Republicans need to hold firm and insist that all non-immediate and non-stimulus spending get stripped -- which would probably make this a $120 billion bill rather than the $900 billion version sitting in the Senate."

NRO's Mark Hemingway thinks Senate GOPers should vote against the stimulus for reasons of self-preservation: "Aside from more conventional arguments against the bill...there's another interesting sub-plot here: campaign cash. Especially in the midst of a recession, there's only so much of it to go around. Thus Republicans in the Senate have been arguing behind closed doors that they deserve the lion's share of the GOP campaign funds available over the House. The argument is that the House is essentially a lost cause for the time being and that it's more important that the Senate preserve their precarious filibuster and expand the number of votes there. But if the Republican leadership in the Senate can't either manage a filibuster of the stimulus package or at the very least wrangle nearly all of their 41 votes against it, it will be much harder to justify giving money to them over the House where the leadership just proved itself in a big way. A lot can happen between now and when the Senate votes but, somewhat perversely, the Senate Republicans have at least one big incentive to come out against the stimulus."

STIMULUS II: Is The GOP Winning The Media War?

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about a new Rasmussen poll indicating that support for the stimulus bill is dropping:

• Morrissey: "The nine-point drop in the gap over a one-week period shows that the electorate has gotten more skeptical about massive government spending. Republicans have done a good job of getting their message out, and they have succeeded especially among independents. A week ago, independents had a virtual dead heat on the bill, 37%-36% in favor. Now independents oppose it 50%-27%. Democrats really are on their own with this bill."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "If these results end up being corroborated by other polls, it would suggest that Republican attacks on the bill have been gaining traction. Another two weeks of hammering away at this thing, and we could see a massive errosion of public support. At the very minimum, we should hold off on adopting the conventional wisdom that the legislation is broadly popular."

Meanwhile, NRO's Yuval Levin thinks Dems "have seriously botched [things] up": "When they manage to unify the entire House Republican caucus with David Brooks and Peggy Noonan, you know the Democrats have seriously botched something up. And boy, they really have. The more you look at the stimulus bill the clearer it becomes that it is the Congressional Democrats, not the opponents of this bill, who have failed to see that we are in a genuine and exceptional crisis. They're working to use the moment as an opportunity to advance the same agenda they haven't been able to move (with good reason) for a decade and more, and in the process are showing that agenda to be what we always knew it was: a massively wasteful, reckless, profligate, slovenly, higgledy-piggledy mess of interest group troughs and technocratic fantasies devoid of any economic thinking or sense of proportion."

STIMULUS III: You Can't Negotiate With Sharks, Obama

Liberal bloggers continue to hammer home the point that Obama should stop trying to appease congressional GOPers:

• Dylan Matthews: "This stimulus will still pass in the end, and it's probably better to get something through fast than to repeat the fight in order to get a better deal. But I hope that Obama is taking away the right lesson from this. He tried cooperating. He reached out to John Boehner and Eric Cantor, even though he didn't need their support. And they screwed him. They had their choice between having an input into policy and becoming irrelevant, and they decided they'd rather be irrelevant. So here's hoping Obama helps them stay that way."
• Daily Kos' Devilstower: "The problem is not that Obama was unwilling to compromise, it's that the Republicans no longer understand the meaning of compromise. [...] What happened yesterday is that Republicans decided that they would rather have a stunt, demonstrating their allegiance to the unsupported mythology of Reaganomics and undiluted party politics, rather than an honest look at how best to address the problems of the nation."
• Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "Republicans aren't interested in 'bipartisanship' except to the extent that they can force Democrats to enact their policies even though they have only a small minority thanks to being so forcefully rejected by the citizenry. And why should they be interested in bipartisanship? Why should they vote for a stimulus package that they don't support and that is anathema to what their most ardent supporters believe? It's very hard to find any virtuous attribute of the contemporary Republican Party, but one thing that can be said for them is that -- unlike Democrats, whose overarching desire in life is to please the needy harmony fetishists by adopting as many GOP views as possible -- Republicans are willing to incur criticisms by opposing what they oppose and supporting what they support. And that's how it should be."
• Amanda Marcotte: "Republicans are lying when they pretend to object to this small bit or that, and concessions offered to get their votes will equal knives planted firmly in your back. Despite this lesson, I guarantee that Republicans will be able to whine and cry until more concessions are granted in the Senate, at what point none of them will vote for the economic stimulus package. [...] Republicans are more afraid of [Rush] Limbaugh than they are of Obama. And Limbaugh has expressed his marching orders -- Obama must fail, and they must put their efforts to that goal. Obama was able to count on a least a handful of Republicans to be decent friends to him in the Senate, but I hope he realizes that they are his blood enemies now and will sacrifice anything to fuck him over now that he's President."

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "[A]s we've discussed ad infinitum, there was no margin for Republicans to support this. If the stimulus succeeds, Obama and the Dems will get all the credit. If it fails, everyone who voted for it will get tarred with it. So Republicans are better off making sure it's seen as a Democratic proposal rather than a bipartisan one. That way, they can wield it as a political weapon. And that's not a bad thing. There's one last negative byproduct of bipartisanship -- lack of accountability. It's harder to hold people responsible for their mistakes when everyone points a finger at someone else. In this case, let the voters note which party is responsible for the stimulus. If it succeeds (and I'm not 100 percent confident that it will), let the credit go to those who deserve it, and if it fails, then Democrats will have to take their accountability lumps. And that's the way it should be."

Moulitsas continues: "Republicans played this properly, unlike the constantly-capitulating Dems the past decade. It's Obama's chasing of the magic 'bipartisan' pony that deserves scorn, because no number of concessions was going to get him a single Republican vote in the House. The Senate is different, and he'll get crossover support there which he can use to laud his 'bipartisanship'. But House Republicans? Screw them. They are irrelevant, unpopular, and should henceforth be treated as such."

STIMULUS IV: If Dems Are Gonna Own This Thing, They Better Make It Good

Like MA Sen. John Kerry and other congressional Dems, some liberal bloggers are calling for the removal of GOP-favored provisions (such as business tax cuts) from the stimulus bill if GOPers refuse to vote for the final product:

• Open Left's David Sirota: "[I]n offering no support for a stimulus bill that includes quite a lot of tax cuts, the GOP really should be written out of negotiations, not just because they have no legislative power, but because their votes yesterday confirmed that they are legislative terrorists interested only in sabotaging the economy."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "While the House 'isn't there yet' when it comes to the prospect of stripping Republican measures from the stimulus if they're not going to vote for it anyway, it's nice to see House Dems at least acknowledge the absurdity of conceding anything if they're getting nothing in return."

Meanwhile, Daily Kos's BarbinMD thinks House GOPers made a huge political mistake in unanimously voting against the stimulus bill: "[W]hat a bunch of clueless lemmings. People overwhelmingly trust and support the President, they want his plan to succeed, they watched Obama travel to Capitol Hill to listen to Republican concerns, saw that he had provisions removed that they objected to, and the GOP responds by having all 177 members vote against the bill. And then 'the team' spread out ... to right wing radio, to the Heritage Foundation, and no doubt littering the landscape at Fox News, to pat themselves on the back for a job well done. What will they do for an encore? Gather on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to sing 'Barack the Magic Negro'?"

GREGG: Ready To Abandon Ship?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about a Huffington Post report that Obama is considering asking Sen. Gregg to serve as Commerce Sec. The move could potentially give Dems 60 seats in the Senate, since Dem Gov. John Lynch would appoint Gregg's replacement:

• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "This kind of bi-partisanship works for me."
• MyDD's Josh Orton: "Doesn't seem like a done deal yet, but politically it's genius. Commerce Secretary is a relatively substance-free post -- [George W.] Bush used the seat as a reward for friends. There's not really much policy creation, so I'd be fine with a Republican like Gregg in the spot. And even better, we'd get our 60th Dem Senator."

Other liberal bloggers are urging their colleagues not to rejoice too much:

• Daily Kos' brownsox: "Before you get your hopes up too high, consider that there's no indication yet of whom Lynch might appoint -- there isn't even a vacancy yet, and Lynch could very well appoint a centrist Democrat to the position even if Gregg did take the job. So we're by no means guaranteed a progressive champion in the seat if Gregg is offered, and takes, the Commerce job."
• FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver: "I'm not sure that the Republicans are all that screwed over if Gregg leaves the Senate and a Democrat is appointed in his stead. Yes, it gets the Democrats to their magic number of 60. But 60 is an overrated, fuzzy number given that [ME Sen.] Olympia Snowe has sided with the administration on 26 of 31 roll call votes so far, and that [ME Sen.] Susan Collins, [PA Sen.] Arlen Specter, [AK Sen.] Lisa Murkowski and [OH Sen.] George Voinovich aren't far behind her. Moreover, if the Democrats actually get the 60th seat, it will be much harder for them to play the obstructionism card in 2010 -- and much easier, conversely, for the Republicans to play the divided government card."

Several bloggers are wondering why Gregg would want the job of Commerce Sec.:

• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "If this scenario were to come to pass, it would sort of make me wonder why Gregg would want to make the switch. Being a United States Senator seems like a pretty good job to me. Commerce Secretary -- eh? But tastes differ."
• Balloon Juice's Tim F.: "[W]hy does Gregg want the job? Whatever the pluses (e.g., he escapes a radicalized caucus that hates and abuses moderates like him), Gregg can look forward to the kind of hate that only [ex-VT Sen.] Jim Jeffords and a sick twelve year old kid can possibly understand. Before Judd Gregg makes up his mind, I suggest that he sit down with Graeme Frost and talk about living as a magnet for hysterical rightwing hate."

TAPPED's Tim Fernholz, on the other hand, thinks there are a lot of reasons why Gregg might want the Cabinet post.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: An Opening For A Small-Government Populism?

NRO's Rich Lowry:

"Two things helped Newt Gingrich Republicans make an anti-government case in the early 1990's: (1) Big government was associated with cultural liberalism; (2) The deficit -- popularized as an issue by Ross Perot -- associated big government with Washington irresponsibility. Over the course of the decade, Bill Clinton shrewdly worked to separate government from cultural liberalism by signing welfare reform and pushing various family-friendly initiatives, and the budget was balanced. This took a lot of the political charge out of anti-big government case. I wonder if the excesses of the bailouts and the stimulus package will make big government politically vulnerable in a way it hasn't been in more than a decade by, (1) Again associating government spending with Washington irresponsibility through the truly dramatic new numbers for the deficit and the debt; (2) Intertwining government with Wall Street/corporate America in a way that makes it possible for a Main Street conservatism to run against both. There may be point here at which a Mike Huckabee populism and a Steve Forbes free-market economics can meet. There's usually a reaction to every action in American politics, and while the Democrats and Obama have basically a free hand to expand government in the current environment, you can already feel the backlash building."

LEST WE FORGET: Country CD Put On To Impress Repair Guy

From The Onion:

"WILMETTE, IL -- In an effort to impress repairman Jason Delmar, 29, whom he called to fix a malfunctioning dishwasher, local resident Brad Osterberg played Merle Haggard's 1968 album Mama Tried for the entire time Delmar was in his home, the 38-year-old intellectual property attorney told reporters Monday. 'He didn't say much, but I think we really connected,' said Osterberg, who later added that he always makes sure he has something by A Tribe Called Quest blaring when his usual pizza delivery guy comes. 'I just wanted him to feel comfortable. After all, I have a pretty nice place.' After leaving Osterberg's home, Delmar reportedly resumed listening to the audiobook of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow on his repair truck's CD player in order to 'get that hillbilly shit out of [his] head.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at January 30, 2009 01:00 PM