Month: February 2009

The New Landscape

by dday

In 1994 when Betsy McCaughey wrote her piece in The New Republic full of lies abut the Clinton health care reform bill, the DC establishment accepted it uncritically because, well, she was in The New Republic, and nobody liked these Clinton outsiders anyway, and there was virtually no countervailing opinion independent of the White House that offered any refutation of her claims. The Village was the one and true arbiter of her story, and their acceptance of it colored the entire health care debate from that point forward.

Fast forward to 2009, and another fallacious McCaughey claim based on a clear misreading of legislative language makes the rounds of conservative media. Her claim that health information technology and comparative effectiveness research would cause rationing and give big gubmint a veto over your medical care is ridiculous. Only this time, a mainstream reporter actually chronicled how that conservative media puke funnel reinforces itself and creates opinion where there are only lies. And then a cable news show thoroughly debunks the lie in a long segment. And a series of blog posts reveal that McCaughey is on the board of directors of a medical device company and therefore has a conflict of interest over stopping comparative effectiveness studies, or that she received stock options from that company days before writing her flase op-ed in Bloomberg, or that the think tank she works at is funded by drug companies. As Ezra Klein says, this is a very new age:

Will Olbermann’s segment on McCaughey end her relevance? Probably not. But it — along with the blog posts, and inevitable columns — will be part of what any CNN producer sees if he wants to run a segment on McCaughey the next morning. It will be part of what an NPR editor reads when she’s researching a show. None of this progressive infrastructure existed in 1994. She published her smear job in an influential journal of putatively liberal opinion that was being edited by a self-professed conservative and it quickly become the conventional wisdom. This time, such arguments will not go unchallenged. That doesn’t mean they will disappear. McCaughey’s arguments are already taking root in the fertile swamp of talk radio. But it will be much harder for such bits of disingenuous nonsense to cement themselves in the center. And by the same token, it will be much easier for liberals to make, and disseminate, their own arguments.

I don’t know if that’s entirely true – there’s nothing the Village likes more than to be willingly blind, and they’ll probably opt for a “teach the controversy” approach – but that’s better than the 1994 landscape.

Sometimes I definitely feel like I’m spitting into the wind out in the lonely blogosphere, and yet letting smears go unchallenged and letting progressive ideas get sandbagged is no longer an option. There is a progressive infrastructure now that can at least get a piece of the spotlight through relentless effort. It ought to actually be funded (greetings, liberal angels!), but even today it does have an impact.

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Tantrums And The SuperNanny

by digby

David Sirota has written an interesting column today about America’s addiction to fake outrage, citing the Michael Phelps case. I think he’s right, but I would add that this phenomenon is also what defines the right wing hissy fit and keeps their Overton Window wide open. It shuts down any kind of sane response to problems by forcing everyone to constantly tip toe on eggshells worrying whether whether the hysterical Republicans will stage one of their tantrums.( And then they blame the victim, saying they shouldn’t have provoked them doing whatever it was that caused them to hold their breath until they turned blue.)

As Sirota points out our drug policy is completely absurd. It’s driven almost entirely by the fake outrage police into counterproductive policies that actually do more harm than good. Take this, for example:

Two days after President Obama’s inauguration, the DEA raided a medical marijuana dispensary in South Lake Tahoe, California. Yesterday, on the same day Eric Holder took office as Obama’s attorney general, the DEA raided two Los Angeles dispensaries. Obama deserves a certain amount of transitional slack in delivering on his promise to respect state laws regarding the medical use of marijuana, but with drug warriors operating on auto pilot in this area he needs to step in soon and let them know the federal policy has changed. Stephen Gutwillig, California director of the Drug Policy Alliance, worries that Obama might pull a Bush:

When President Bush was on the campaign trail in 2000 he promised not to interfere in state medical marijuana laws, but that turned out to be a lie as the DEA proceeded to terrorize medical marijuana patients and providers by raiding dozens of dispensaries across California. President Obama said on the campaign trail that these raids would end under his administration, and millions believed him. We hope these recent raids don’t represent official Administration policy and that Obama will order federal agencies in no uncertain terms to stop harassing medical marijuana patients and providers in California.

I don’t doubt that the reason the DEA did this was to provoke fake controversy and try to force Obama to back off his promise. (The Phelps matter probably helped them do that.) They know that the last thing Obama wants is a confrontation with the rightwing freak show over pot so they forced his hand. This stuff happens all the time.

We saw it with the ridiculous General Betrayus meltdown which caused the Democrats to pretty much give up Iraq as a political issue. From Whitewater to Monica Madness to Sore Lieberman to drone planes to Schiavo to amnesty and on and on. This is the most powerful weapon in their arsenal. They tie the Democrats up in knots, making them cautious and frightened, just like the exhausted mothers you see on the TV show “The Supernanny” who are completely at the mercy of the miscreant children who have total control over the household by threatening tantrums if they don’t get their way.

We just saw it with the shrieking case of the vapors over the stimulus bill, which I suspect is coming down exactly as the Republicans wanted it to come down — watered down by their hissy fit, passing with only three Republicans and setting them up with talking points for the next five years. But it passed because they wanted it to pass while inflicting as much damage as possible to the new president. (I have no doubt they could have held back Specter and peeled off a couple of Dems if they’d had the Big Boyz put the screws to them.)After all, if Obama effectively guides the country through the crisis, they are dead anyway. If he doesn’t, they can say they had no part of it.

America has always loved witch hunts, which is perhaps the ultimate fake outrage. They like to ritually punish a designated flouter of some moral or ethical value. They particularly like to do it when it is a common, human transgression so that they can hide their own hypocrisy. It’s a remnant of our puritan roots (which are also part of our conservative heritage.) But I don’t know that anyone has been as successful at marketing and selling this propensity for fake outrage as the modern Republican Party. It’s their operational principle.

Indeed, you can see that they are getting ready to roll-out a whole new campaign:

One feature of the GOP resistance to the stimulus bill is a renewed conservative populism—it is anti-big business as well as anti-big government. To some it’s an ill fit, but Gingrich welcomes what he sees as a return to Reaganism and small government. Reagan “represented grassroots America reforming Washington; he did not represent the elites telling the American people what to do,” he says. “Over the last eight years the Republican Party became the right wing of the party of big government, and forgot that its grassroots was with the American people. I’m delighted that they’re going back. There are simple tests: is it better or worse for small business? Is it better or worse for the self-employed, for entrepreneurial start-ups, for your local synagogue, for your local community? If in fact it’s terrific for Citibank and GM, but bad for small business, then it’s an elite bill—it’s not a populist bill.”

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These days, Gingrich is busy pitching policy prescriptions on his AmericanSolutions.com website. He thinks he may have found the basis for a new Contract with America: “12 American Solutions for Jobs and Prosperity.” It builds on the framing first laid down in his book Real Change, picking issues which can gain the support of 80-plus percent of the American people, in what he calls a “red, white and blue” coalition.

This will be the usual demagoguery and lies, of course. But it’s going to happen on the back of their latest fake outrage against government spending. This is obviously ridiculous, considering their behavior as a majority party, but being ridiculous is part of the reason why this stuff works. They nearly drive the other side mad with their hypocrisy and shamelessness and force them to either continuously relitigate the past or ignore them, neither of which are very effective.

Fake outrage is an American pastime. People love to gossip and they love to judge others for sins they themselves commit. But the Republican Party has been as successful at using that for political purposes as any group in history. It remains to be seen when, if ever, the American people are going to step in like the nanny
and force the Democrats to put these monsters into a time-out chair and leave them there until they stop destroying the country with their tantrums.

*You really should read Newtie’s whole interview. He’s such an ass. He pretty much says outright that the only bipartisanship possible is for Democrats to pass Republican policies because the majority of Americans are conservatives. At some point, somebody is going to have to challenge that. They know it isn’t true, but they are very successful at manipulating people into believing it’s true — and the Democrats very often help them by using their propaganda and voting with them..

One of the things that Obama’s failed bipartisan outreach has obscured is that some progress actually was made. Only 7 Democrats defected using conservative arguments. I don’t know when I’ve seen that on something this big. Baby steps — we know the Blue Dogs are pulling hard on their chains and Gawd only knows what Rahm has promised them besides what we’ve heard.

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Not One Single Vote, Again

by dday

So the House passed the conference report of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

No Republican votes again.

(Seven Dems voted no – Bright, DeFazio, Griffith, Minnick, Peterson, Shuler and Taylor. Dan Lipinski copped out and voted “Present.” I’m assuming Peter DeFazio’s was a protest vote against what he considered to be insufficient public transit spending in the bill.)

It’s not their bill, so they really shouldn’t be voting for it. But it’s hilarious that Republicans think they’re winning. They think that Judd Gregg is a modern-day folk hero for realizing 9 days late that he’s a conservative and Obama’s a Democrat. They think they’re gaining credibility with the American people by peddling lies on the floor of the House (did he really just hold up a toy mouse?) and claiming that spending isn’t stimulus. The actually think it’s in their interest to sink the global economy.

Andrew Sullivan is succinct:

This much is now clear. Their clear and open intent is to do all they can, however they can, to sabotage the new administration (and the economy to boot). They want failure. Even now. Even after the last eight years. Even in a recession as steeply dangerous as this one. There are legitimate debates to be had; and then there is the cynicism and surrealism of total political war. We now should have even less doubt about what kind of people they are. And the mountain of partisan vitriol Obama will have to climb every day of the next four or eight years.

More here. I’m not surprised by it. They are bereft of ideas, especially in a crisis, and with a political climate that rewards day-to-day pugilistic nonsense over anything substantive, of course the GOP would measure themselves by news cycle wins and losses and roar like a bunch of LARPers any time their head halfling makes it to home base with the opposing team’s flag. It is beyond perverse, but considering the posturing for the future, the ability to nitpick the economy over and over through united opposition, it’s completely expected.

Which is what progressives looking at Obama’s efforts at bipartisanship have been saying from the beginning.

• What Obama did: Trusted Judd Gregg when he indicated that, “despite past disagreements about policies, he would support, embrace and move forward with the president’s agenda.”

• What Obama got in return: A “change of heart” from Gregg, who said that he “couldn’t be Judd Gregg” at Commerce.

• What Obama did: Reached out to have dinner with right-wing pundits Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and David Brooks.

• What Obama got in return: A ripping from his right-wing friends, who called it the worst in “galactic history.”

• What Obama did: Tried to work with the House GOP by preemptively including tax cuts, stripping stimulative spending proposals, and attending their conference meeting.

• What Obama got in return: Zero votes (and a bunch of false myths about his plan)

• What Obama did: Tried to reach out to John McCain to work together on “solving our financial crisis.”

• What Obama got in return: Nothing. McCain voted against the legislation, and even went so far as to call it “generational theft” and hypocritically complained that it contained “corporate giveaways.”

There’s no bargaining with the rump faction, and I think the White House is coming around to recognizing that. And perhaps there’s some value in making the breaking of the extended olive branch very public and visible. And it’s good to hear that future message won’t be calibrated to the biorhythms of the Village:

Mr. Emanuel owned up to one mistake: message. What he called the outside game slipped away from the White House last week, when the president and others stressed bipartisanship rather than job creation as they moved toward passing the measure. White House officials allowed an insatiable desire in Washington for bipartisanship to cloud the economic message a point coming clear in a study being conducted on what went wrong and what went right with the package, he said.

This is kind of serious stuff. The global economic meltdown is now the biggest threat to the United States, so says the National Intelligence Director. We can’t afford these neo-Hooverists, or the dynamic that empowers the Axis of Centrism. Best of luck to the Obama team to figure out a path forward.

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Read It And Weep

by digby

William Grieder has written a must-read article for the Nation on the impending Grand Bargain. Considering the recent article in Politico saying that the left is trusting of Obama on the issue, (which I heard very much reflects the administration’s thinking) this is particularly relevant:

Defending Social Security sounds like yesterday’s issue–the fight people won when they defeated George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize the system in 2005. But the financial establishment has pushed it back on the table, claiming that the current crisis requires “responsible” leaders to take action. Will Obama take the bait? Surely not. The new president has been clear and consistent about Social Security, as a candidate and since his election. The program’s financing is basically sound, he has explained, and can be assured far into the future by making only modest adjustments.

But Obama is also playing footsie with the conservative advocates of “entitlement reform” (their euphemism for cutting benefits). The president wants the corporate establishment’s support on many other important matters, and he recently promised to hold a “fiscal responsibility summit” to examine the long-term costs of entitlements. That forum could set the trap for a “bipartisan compromise” that may become difficult for Obama to resist, given the burgeoning deficit. If he resists, he will be denounced as an old-fashioned free-spending liberal. The advocates are urging both parties to hold hands and take the leap together, authorizing big benefits cuts in a circuitous way that allows them to dodge the public’s blame. In my new book, Come Home, America, I make the point: “When official America talks of ‘bipartisan compromise,’ it usually means the people are about to get screwed.”

The Social Security fight could become a defining test for “new politics” in the Obama era. Will Americans at large step up and make themselves heard, not to attack Obama but to protect his presidency from the political forces aligned with Wall Street interests? This fight can be won if people everywhere raise a mighty din–hands off our Social Security money!–and do it now, before the deal gains momentum. Popular outrage can overwhelm the insiders and put members of Congress on notice: a vote to gut Social Security will kill your career. By organizing and agitating, people blocked Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security. Imagine if he had succeeded–their retirement money would have disappeared in the collapsing stock market.

The article goes on to explain (again) how the social security system is more than solvent and goes over the beginnings of the impending bait and switch back in the Reagan era and talks about the Pete Peterson crusade that is leading this charge.

After this past couple of weeks, one hopes that the administration has recognized that you can’t bargain with political sociopaths. But I agree with Greider that “the left” would be stupid to take for granted that Obama will never go near social security and that the only guarantee is for the people to generate a mighty fit that will make their heads spin — before the idea gets entrenched. This is a classic shock doctrine move which depends upon an elite consensus and a confused and stressed populace to be carried out.

Update: Here’s John Judis from The New Republic pretty much laying out the case that if the economy gets worse it’s — guess what — “the left’s” fault for not being more shrill. You just can’t win with the New Republic. But he does have a point.

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The Light Dawns

by digby

This is Andrew Sullivan, pretty much agreeing with my analysis. I don’t see this as anything different from what they’ve been doing since the late 80s, but 20 years late is better than never:

The GOP Has Declared War On Obama This much is now clear. Their clear and open intent is to do all they can, however they can, to sabotage the new administration (and the economy to boot). They want failure. Even now. Even after the last eight years. Even in a recession as steeply dangerous as this one. There are legitimate debates to be had; and then there is the cynicism and surrealism of total political war. We now should have even less doubt about what kind of people they are. And the mountain of partisan vitriol Obama will have to climb every day of the next four or eight years.
12 Feb 2009 05:44 pm

Gregg Was Pwned

It gets clearer. When Judd Gregg approached the Obama administration to see if he could be a part of it, he was assuming that his own party wasn’t going to adopt a policy of total warfare against the newly elected president in a time of enormous economic peril. Between that moment and the current all-out ideological assault on Obama, his position became untenable. His recusal on the stimulus package provoked fury at home (check out the comments here) and dyspepsia among the GOP who are intent on responding to an open hand with a clenched fist. I have to say even I am a little taken aback by the force of the Republican assault. Even in a downturn as swift and alarming as this one, even after an election that clearly favored one approach over another, even after the most conciliatory efforts by an incoming president in memory, these people have gone to war against the president. The president should stay cool. The rest of us should realize what motivates the GOP: the opportunism of selective ideology.
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This isn’t just a theory. They are out there bragging about it:

Republican Louisiana Sen. David Vitter made a trip to DC’s Chinatown on Thursday to nibble on kung pao chicken and rally the conservative troops. Addressing the DC lawyers chapter of the conservative legal group, the Federalist Society, Vitter got right down to red meat. After quoting comments from President Obama suggesting that he’d like his judicial nominees to be able to empathize with the downtrodden, Vitter declared that demanding empathy in a judge was something you’d expect in a “dictatorship.” How empathy equates with repressive rule, Vitter didn’t really explain, except to say that it had little to do with ensuring checks and balances on an imperial government…

But Vitter didn’t really come to Tony Cheng’s to discuss judges or the Constitution. His talk, entitled “Defending Conservative Principles in the Senate,” was mostly a complaint about the economic stimulus bill that his Senate colleagues were poised to pass without his vote or the votes of most Republicans. According to Vitter, his party was having a come-to-Jesus moment over the stimulus package, which had provided the minority party an opportunity to rediscover its mantra of smaller government and lower taxes.

[…]

More interesting, Vitter offered up a few specifics about the opposition party’s political strategy given its diminished congressional power. Vitter said defeating the stimulus bill was never the goal; changing public opinion about it was. “We may have lost the vote, but we collectively have won the debate,” he said, claiming that the public now perceived that the bill as evidence that the Obama administration was not bringing real change to Washington, but rather just engaging in the same old wasteful government spending. (Congressional Democrats have been disseminating polls showing that the stimulus plan is backed by a majority of the public.) “We’re getting back to our roots,” Vitter said of congressional Republicans.

According to Vitter, the GOP is basically betting the farm that the stimulus package is going to fail, and the party wants Democrats to go down with it. “Our next goal is to make President Obama and liberal Democrats in Congress own it completely,” he said. Instead of coming up with serious measures to save the economy, the party intends to devote its time to an “we told you so” agenda that will include GOP-only hearings on the bill’s impact in the coming months to highlight the bill’s purportedly wasteful elements and shortcomings.

While Vitter seemed to think this was a brilliant new political tactic, voters might be less enthusiastic than Federalist Society members about politicians who spend the next 18 months rooting for the economy to get worse, just to prove a point. But, in Vitter’s world, that’s the price you apparently have to pay for sticking to your principles, call girls be damned.

h/t to sleon

On The Origin Of Hullabaloo Bloggers

by dday

I know this is more Tristero’s territory, but as fate would have it, 164 years after Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day, I came into being. If you simply MUST make me pair all three together, well, fine, I will, but I take no pleasure in it.

We do a disservice to these great men by following the accident of history and drawing too many parallels, but certainly neither was afraid of the occasional truth in a world all too burdened with falsehood. Darwin had the courage to follow facts instead of dogma and set a path for evolutionary biology that is as wondrous as it is grounded in science. As he said in the final line of On The Origin Of Species:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

As for Lincoln, I’ve often praised him for his political foresight, his acknowledgment of the realities of a house divided, and his work to save the union. Here’s President Barack Obama today.

Obama pointed out that the men building the Capitol wondered whether each workday would be their last, fearing that the metal they were using in the construction would be requisitioned for use in the war. “When President Lincoln was finally told of all the metal being used here, his response was short and clear: ‘That is as it should be,’ ” he said. “The American people needed to be reminded, he believed, that even in a time of war, the work would go on; that even when the nation itself was in doubt, its future was being secured; and that on that distant day, when the guns fell silent, a national Capitol would stand, with a statue of freedom at its peak, as a symbol of unity in a land still mending its divisions.”

Which is nice and all, but I prefer Cooper Union, cutting through the rhetoric of his opposition and speaking the truth of how they seek only to have everyone be placed “avowedly with them,” and how “They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.” It is truth that binds these two.

And truth that imperils them. The Gallup poll showing that only 39% of Americans believe in evolution is very dangerous, not just for our future as a competitive nation educationally and economically, but dangerous to the idea of rationality, which those who believe in must protect with an eternal vigilance. It is ignorance – ignorance of history, ignorance of facts, ignorance of reality, whether by design or by accident – that has brought us to the crisis where we now find ourselves, both domestically and abroad. There will always be those who counter thought with the need to believe – and hey, if anyone wants to pick up a quick 6 trillion dollars, talk to the Islamic creationist in that article who’s offering that sum for anyone who shows him a fossil proving evolution – and there must always be those who lighten those dark corners with reason before it envelops. In many ways, that’s a core purpose of the progressive blogosphere – aha, I knew I could find the connection somewhere!!!

I say all that to say this – the Library of Congress has released several never-before-scanned photos of Lincoln onto their Flickr page, including this slick one showing Lincoln with the Johnny Cash look:

In solidarity, I am not wearing my hair the same way today. But I appreciate Abe and Charles’ contributions … especially because otherwise, the next most-famous celeb on this birthdate is Lorne Greene.

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Transparent Secrecy

by digby

I’ve heard Plouffe is a control freak but what the hell is up with this?

Barack Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, is slated to appear at the National Press Club to deliver the keynote speech for the Georgetown University and Politico sponsored event “Transition 2009.” Except, before he even took the stage, things started to unravel. Plouffe, it seems, asked that his address be kept off-record even though it was being held in the Press Club, according to an official with Georgetown University. A rep for Politico said the publication did not sponsor the Plouffe portion of the event. “We don’t sponsor off-the-record events,” said one staffer with the publication.

I can’t imagine why Plouffe needs to hold speeches that are off the record. it’s very strange and it lens a little bit more weight to the issues Jane Hamsher raised yesterday, especially when you see Dana Milbank acting like a jackass:

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank protested Plouffe’s decision by wearing a make-shift sandwich board that read, “I’m non-Plouffe-d” on one side and “un-Plouff-able” on the other. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Press Club issued a letter (read the text below) emphasizing the group’s “strong opposition” to the Obama campaign manager’s decision.

I appreciate a sense of humor and much as the next snarky blogger. But his antics trivialize everything and they’re not even particularly clever. C’mon.
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Bringing In The Big Guns

by digby

I missed this. My God.

Call it a pipe dream come true: When members of the Conservative Working Group held their weekly strategy meeting on the Hill on Tuesday morning, they were joined by none other than Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, who had come to offer his thoughts on the economic recovery bill.

The Senate staffers who showed up at 9 a.m. for the closed-door meeting refused to leak the contents of their discussion with the tradesman-cum-strategist, but Wurzelbacher himself revealed that the advice they soaked up was just good, old-fashioned “common sense.”

Wurzelbacher opposes the stimulus and said he questioned why the government can’t just cut its bills like other people do. He also advised staffers to take a harder line on the legislation: “Republicans on the Hill are afraid of saying too much,” he noted.

[…]

Wesley Denton, communications director for Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), whose office coordinates the group, said, “I think staffers were happy to have him there and hear his perspective. He’s an interesting person for staffers to hear from, and it certainly helps us get an understanding about how the stimulus debate is playing out in the country with regular folks.”

Right. You get a sense of how it’s playing among dittoheads like JoeSam, which really doesn’t require bringing somebody up to capital hill. All they have to do is tune in to talk radio and listen to their Dear Leader. And what they are saying is total bullshit.

Today, he was up on Capital Hill holding a “live hearing” and interviewing members of congress for his new gig as a journalist. And he aked Sherrod Brown a question which I think, sadly, is not actually all that uncommon for many Americans and not just dittoheads:

I mean, I cut cable when I realize that I’m not making enough money to cover my bills, I use coupons. Shouldn’t we expect the government to cut some programs?

This is a problem. Nobody has made it clear that the problem isn’t caused by the government being broke and loose talk about the immediate need for “fiscal rsponsibility” isn’t helping to dispel that.

Obviously Joe is a moron. But I’ve heard this from other people who I don’t consider to be morons. Tax cuts have been sold as the magical elixer for everything so they don’t question them (and nobody wants to question free money) but the idea that the government needs to spend directly when the economy is crashing does seem counterintuitive to a lot of people.

The president does a good job of explaining it, but I’m afraid that the Democratic pundits and liberal gasbags on television don’t. Unfortunately, the gasbags have now shifted into constant questioning about how we’ll know if it works and the Republicans are already ahead of the game fanning out all over TV to say that if the economy gets better it’s in spite of the stimulus ( it’s just the usual rebound of the business cycle) and if it gets worse it’s because of the stimulus. I’m not saying that people will believe that, but it seems to me that it’s always a bad idea to let conservative propaganda go unrebutted. It has a way of creeping into the ether until it just “rings true” at which point it’s very difficult to turn back.

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Barking Mad

by digby

Chris Hayes has a must read article in The Nation about the Blue Dogs.:

I’ve spent the past few months trying to sort out why the Blue Dogs get so much attention. The best I can tell, there are two main reasons. One has to do with the organizational mechanics of the Blue Dog caucus, which is more unified and cohesive than any other in the House. The other has to do with the ongoing Beltway love affair with “fiscal conservatism.”

Yep. And until we kill that phony meme, and put the Blue Dogs down, it will continue to make it nearly impossible to enact liberal legislation. The Republicans start unnecessary, hugely expensive wars and enact massive tax cuts, thus starving the beast, and then posture and preen like a bunch of fastidious schoolmarms when they are out of power. And the village just goes with that flow.

Someday we’ll have a real debate about ideology, results and the meaning of “responsibility.” Until then, they make our world and we just live in it.

Update: Be sure to read this piece by Jane Hamsher about what those fabulous indigo boys ‘n girls have in store for us.

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Who’s Your Daddy?

by digby

So Judd Gregg’s pulled his nomination. And all the gasbags are pretending to have no idea why. But Tom Edsall already told us:

New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg’s decision to abstain from voting February 10 on the economic stimulus bill has not only left officials in Washington confused but has provoked a firestorm of protest in his home state. When the Manchester Union Leader first reported in a brief, six-graph story that President Obama’s nominee for Commerce Secretary had “recused myself from voting during the pendency of my nomination,” the reader comments immediately poured in. Ann, of Ashland, N.H. wrote, “I am very disappointed with SENATOR Gregg’s decision. NH’s representation has been compromised,” followed by Tom of Campton, “Either do your job or resign,” and then by Dennis from Merrimack, “I’ve got this violent urge to hurl! He should consider never returning to New Hampshire. What a disgrace!!!!!” […]
Some of the sharpest criticism was voiced by Washington-based conservative Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “You recuse yourself because you have a conflict of interest and if he believes he has a conflict of interest by taking the job, he shouldn’t take the job. And if he isn’t being bought, then he should feel free to vote and vote against [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] when he feels Reid is wrong, even if Obama is with Reid. The point of having a Republican in your Cabinet is that you are saying you are open to different ideas,” but that won’t happen “if you’re folding up your conscience and your New Hampshire interest and your track record into a little suitcase and putting it in a little corner and then doing what you’re told.”

The Republican Party was hired by the conservative movement to do its bidding and they aren’t going to stand for them trying to get out of that contract. Republican politicians are required to stab Democrats in the back in order to stay in good standing. It’s how they organize themselves and prove their loyalty. That’s what Gregg did today by making Obama look like a chump by saying that he had “too many differences” and can’t stomach the stimulus. (And the press office was taken by surprise, which means Gregg really wanted to stick the shiv in hard.) All the gasbags can talk about now is the “principles” he couldn’t bear to violate by being part of a Democratic administration.
I think we can officially call the bold experiment in post partisanship a failure at this point. If they can pull this stuff at their greatest moment of weakness, they have no intention of acting in good faith down the road.
I heard earlier that Reid was frantically calling to keep the “centrists” on board because Teddy is very unwell and may not be able to make the vote. I don’t know if Gregg’s vote plays into that, but let’s hope not.
Update: Meanwhile, the polls show that Obama going to the people is working. Support for the recovery plan is growing. Not that is matters in terms of bipartisan cooperation. The Republicans impeached Clinton when his approval rating was above 60%. They don’t care about anyone but their dittoheads.

Update II: John Harwood says

“This isn’t partisanship in the petty sense. Nobody can accuse Barack Obama or Judd Gregg of being small minded on a personal basis on this issue. And I think what happened is we see how far apart they are. I think this, by the way, makes all those Republicans who voted against the Obama stimulus package feel better about it and look better about it because it allows them to say, look we have fundamental differences of ideology approach with this administration and I thin this is a very, very bad sign for achieving things like entitlement reform and health care reform, both of which everybody said for a long time you need two parties sort of underneath a solution to prop it up and make it long lasting.”

And here I thought ideology didn’t matter.
Look, this is just nonsense. This isn’t an ideological problem. The Republicans spenttaxpayer money like falling down drunken sailors for years. They will spend until they exhaust themselves if it’s a Republican administration. So this was certainly partisan in the most small minded, craven sense of the word.
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