You gotta give the Republicans credit. They have displayed extreme discipline in defending their ideas despite those ideas being discredited and morally bankrupt.
Last week, House Republicans voted 177-0 against the stimulus. Their reasons for the vote amounted to problems that were less than 2% of the overall bill. Then today, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell bases his party’s opposition to the stimulus in the Senate on the premise that the original New Deal did not work.
“But one of the good things about reading history is you learn a good deal. And, we know for sure that the big spending programs of the New Deal did not work.”
“In 1940, unemployment was still 15%. And, it’s widely agreed among economists, that what got us out of the doldrums that we were in during the Depression was the beginning of World War II.
Now, I know what you’re saying–that’s asinine. But for them, it doesn’t matter that their argument is completely discredited. It just matters that they keep repeating it. Same goes for when Republican Senator James Inholfe says that this bill is 93% spending and 7% stimulus. Put aside the fact that he completely made those two numbers up (the bill is 40% tax cuts, so who knows what he is referring to). Stimulus is spending by definition, so what the hell does that even mean? Obama asked the same question incredulously two days ago.
Ratcheting up the sarcasm, the president said: “So then you get the argument, ‘well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.’ What do you think a stimulus is?”“That’s the whole point,” he said, as the audience hooted and applauded.
The problem with the whole situation is not the lack of bipartisanship for the bill, speed of the process, or the minute examples of waste, it’s the actual nature of the debate. The bill certainly isn’t perfect, but Republicans act as if any government money will cause the destruction of the nation.
In the real world, portions of the “spending†that Republicans deplore are, in some cases, the best parts of the bill. For example, John McCain, apparently not realizing he lost the election on economic issues, waded into the debate and criticized upgrading all federal cars to hybrids. Obama explains the truth:
“Critics of this plan ridiculed our notion that we should use part of the money to modernize the entire fleet of federal vehicles to take advantage of state-of-the-art fuel efficiency. This is what they call pork,” Obama said in a speech at the U.S. Energy Department in Washington.“You know the truth,” the president said. “It will not only save the government significant money over time, it will not only create manufacturing jobs for folks who are making these cars, it will set a standard for private industry to match.”
That logical analysis would be iron clad for most people, but when you’re dealing with Republicans, it’s another ball game altogether. Tom Coburn yesterday put forth the argument that government jobs are inferior to real jobs:
And then there is Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), complaining in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal that of the 3 million jobs that the stimulus package might create or save, one in five will be government jobs, as if there is something inherently inferior or unsatisfactory about that. (Note to Coburn’s political director: One in five workers in Oklahoma is employed by government.)
I was all for Obama’s bipartisan overtures but is getting Republicans on board with rational thinking even possible? Balloon Juice explains:
I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.
Fortunately, Obama seems to have recognized the impossibility of reasoning with insanity. After trying to appease them for two weeks, he has conceded if you can’t convince Republicans with logic or facts, you might as well crush them. After delivering a blistering rebuttal on Thursday, Obama is bringing the argument to the streets next week. He’ll start with a prime time press conference on Monday, then he is moving the stimulus debate to town hall meetings in states like Indiana and Florida, the battlegrounds where he won the election, and more importantly, where there are Republican Senators up for re-election in 2010.