EZ Bipartisanship
by digby
I’ve been saying it for a while: bipartisanship is actually very simple to attain. All the Democrats have to do is enact the Republican agenda (which, when it comes to Wall Street, they are more than happy to do.) Robert Kuttner concurs:
Its Wall Street and Silicon Valley sponsors baptized it the JOBS Act, a contrived acronym for Jumpstart Our Business Startups — claiming that it would increase jobs. An ill-timed scandal involving accounting misrepresentations by Groupon in its stock pitch nearly rained on the JOBS Act’s parade. But President Obama signed the Act anyway, in a display of… bipartisanship.
Obama, in a Rose Garden ceremony, called it a “game changer” that would promote hiring by small businesses. More likely, it will promote stock frauds.
Leading GOP legislators were on hand to cheer for Obama’s support for Republican legislation. Standing behind Obama was House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a sponsor of the Act, who has blocked just about everything else Obama has proposed.
So this is what bipartisanship looks like. All Democrats have to do is embrace Republican ideology and — voila! — bipartisanship.
In this case, Silicon Valley Democrats helped, too. According to the Wall Street Journal, in a now-it-can-be-told piece, a venture capitalist named Kate Mitchell, a Democratic campaign donor, worked behind the scenes with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Republican House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bacchus to shelter small (under a billion dollars!) companies from the disclosure and reporting requirements that protect investors.
Seeing a way both to ingratiate the White House with the business elite and to cheer Wall Street and Silicon Valley donors, Obama jumped on board. Once the White House signaled that Obama would sign it, most Democrats got out of the way.
This is what bipartisanship looks like.
Indeed it is. I’m sure there were many toasts to future bipartisan deals such as this one once they get this fall’s unpleasantness out of the way. The possibilities for more happy Rose Garden ceremonies are endless. Indeed, I’m guessing that the only hope progressives have is that the House Tea Partiers will be so riled up by the “liberal” Romney’s loss that they’ll try to impeach Obama — and ruin their only chance to completely dismantle the New Deal.
And keep in mind: the Democrats are either very, very cheap dates or they truly believe it’s a good idea to be able to rip off investors.
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