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Published by digby on April 21, 2010

Oh No

by digby

Brian Beutler at TPM reports on the possibility of GOP filibusters of the financial reform bill and the Democratic plans to thwart them:

[S]urely Democrats and their allies in key pressure groups have rehearsed a bold, unified response, in the event that the GOP follows through on their threat to block debate. Ads are in the can, talking points are drafted, and everyone’s been prepped to argue before the world that the Republicans have allied themselves with the firms that wrecked the economy. Right?The answer to the question is: yes and no. Democrats and outside groups have some contingency plans in place, if the GOP carries out a filibuster. But those efforts aren’t being tightly coordinated, and with a key test vote coming as early as Monday, there’s precious little time left for Dems and their allies to get their ducks in a row. Given how politically explosive a GOP filibuster could be, the ad hoc nature of the Democrats’ plans that suggests they won’t take as full advantage of it as perhaps they could. “When Republicans pulled their obstructionist tricks during healthcare, there was an immediate response from every pro-reform group,” says a concerned source working in messaging at one of the largest Dem-aligned financial reform pressure groups in the country. “Now that the GOP is using the same stalling and backroom meetings for Wall Street, that response just doesn’t exist.” “If similar things had happened in healthcare that have happened during past week, we would have all blown the lid off of it,” the source added.

I keep wondering about this too. There seems to be some strange zenlike confidence that this thing is going to sail through and I honestly don’t know where it’s coming from. Sure, it’s possible that Republicans are all quivering in their boots at the prospect of failing to vote for Financial Reform but I don’t know why the Dems would be so sanguine that there’s no chance of a serious fight.

Krugman evokes the Lucy law:

My own conversations with administration officials over the past few weeks have given me the sense that they were quite sure that FinReg wouldn’t be like health care — and that they didn’t seem to take seriously those (including me) who thought they were taking too much for granted. I have a theory about the problem here. My understanding is that Obama officials have looked at the polls, which show that the public overwhelmingly favors cracking down on Wall Street; so they assumed that the GOP wouldn’t dare stand in the way. But they seem not to have learned, even now, that the right has an awesome ability to create its own reality: that Mitch McConnell et al would stand in the way of reform while claiming to be taking a stand against Wall Street. Nor can you count on the truth to sink in with the public. The conventions of he-said-she-said reporting, among other things, make it surprisingly easy to get away with even the most obvious hypocrisy.

I wrote about this yesterday too. The right isn’t constrained by this thing we all call “reality.” They can easily persuade their followers that black is white and up is down. For instance, listen to the head of the Republican Party talk about this yesterday:

They have plenty of stupid arguments.

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