They Will Not Stop
by digby
Now, it’s obvious that everyone believes a stimulus bill of some kind is a good idea (the House bill passed nearly unanimously), so it’s not as if anyone voted against the Senate version because they believe it’s a fundamentally flawed concept. And since the last month’s worth of economic news has been uniformly bad, no one who believes in stimulus has any real reason to balk at fattening up the package a bit. This wasn’t a principled stand about letting the economy work things out on its own.
But what happened? Republicans filibustered the larger bill and then sustained the filibuster on virtually a party line vote. Why? Because it had a few billion dollars of spending targeted at Democratic priorities. There’s nothing more to it.
The moral of the story is this: Republicans have no intention of ever working with Democrats on anything remotely like a bipartisan basis. Even on something as trivial as this, they filibustered and won. They will do the same thing next year no matter who’s president. They will do it on every single bill, no matter how minor. They will never stop obstructing. Period. Presidential hopefuls, take note.
If you look at the race so far, it’s clear that it’s no easy task to even unify the Democratic Party. And as long as the Republicans have 41 votes, they’ll never stop- obstructing. They are doing this now simply because they can. (After all, they could pass a popular bill like this and let the president veto it if they wanted to play at bipartisanship for the sake of the public who everyone claims is desperate for it.) The truth is that as they have at least 41 safe Republican senate seats, they just don’t give shit. The regional heart of the party is solid and strong and whether they are in a minority or a majority they will make damned sure there isn’t any compromise. They don’t need it and they don’t want to dilute their message or their brand for the future.
And they will make damned sure the villagers proclaim the Democrats to be weak and loathsome losers whose refusal to reach across the aisle is failing all Americans. I wish I knew how either Clinton or Obama planned to deal with this, but I confess I haven’t the vaguest idea.
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