THE UP-SIDE OF THE INK BLOT:

GOP walks thin line in opposing stimulus (PATRICK O'CONNOR, 1/26/09, Politico)

Congressional Republicans face the tough task of opposing an economic stimulus plan proposed by President Obama – without opposing Obama himself.

So expect the GOP to heap plenty of blame on the congressional Democrats who authored the legislation while shielding the popular new president from any of the mud slung at his allies.

It helps that most Republicans genuinely dislike the initial draft offered by Democrats in the House, an $825 billion combination of spending and tax cuts that seeks to boost funding for programs long ignored by President Bush.

GOP leaders balk at stimulus: Object to specifics, size of Obama's $825b package (Sasha Issenberg, January 26, 2009 , Boston Globe)

Over the last week, some Republicans have intensified their criticism of the $825 billion package as too big, too slow, and too wasteful to pull the country out of recession.

"There should be an endpoint to all of this spending - say, two years," Senator John McCain, the party's 2008 presidential nominee, said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." He vowed to vote against the bill in its current form.

"We need to have a commitment that after a couple of quarters of GDP growth, we will embark on a path to reduce spending . . . to get our budget in balance," McCain said.

This is where the Unicorn Rider's emptiness plays into the GOP's hands, because they can just pretend he's really whoever they want him to be. They can cast themselves as helping him to fulfill his desire to help the middle class by returning tax money, limit the deficit by shrinking the stimulus, fight pork by killing Democratic projects, etc. His candidacy was so devoid of substance that you can convince people that's what he wants and/or force him and Congressional Democrats to say he wants the opposite, thereby defining him as a standard-issue liberal Democrat. For Barrack Obama, specificity is decline.

MORE:
GOP keeps 2010 in mind on stimulus (JOSH KRAUSHAAR, 1/26/09, Politico)

While their support is not critical for passage of the legislation in a Democratic-controlled Congress, the reticence of those most likely to cross the aisle suggests an emerging GOP political calculus that members who vote against the package won’t suffer political consequences in 2010.

Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a leading GOP moderate who co-chairs the Tuesday Group, a caucus of moderate Republicans, spelled out his concerns in a memo last week to his House Appropriations Committee colleagues, replete with an 11-point rebuttal of the proposed stimulus.

In the memo, he argued that a similar level of job creation can be achieved for just $65 billion and that many of the items are wasteful and unrelated to economic stimulus.

Kirk said his office e-mailed a poll to his constituents — in a district that was easily carried by Obama — and 65 percent responded in opposition to the legislation.

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Posted by Orrin Judd at January 26, 2009 8:34 AM