YES TO THE UR AND STIMULUS, NO TO CONGRESS:

First, Do No Harm: Congressional Republicans were right to vote against the stimulus (Fred Barnes, 02/16/2009, Weekly Standard)

John McCain is on to something. No stimulus bill--that is, no "economic recovery" package at all--"is better" than President Obama's bill, McCain says. Sure, he'd prefer his own alternative. At $445 billion, it would cost roughly half Obama's bill. And Republican senators unanimously voted for it. But Democrats shot it down as if it were a trifle. What Obama wants is more spending. "That's the whole point!" the president blurted out last week in a moment of candor.

McCain's stand is significant in a way no other Republican senator's would be. He's not the run-of-the-mill Republican making a partisan point. He's hardly a Limbaugh dittohead. McCain is the Senate's most relentless seeker of bipartisan compromise. His colleagues feared he might seek the media's favor by going along with Obama.

But Obama left McCain and nearly every other Republican in Congress with only one option: Just say no. [...]

Two facts all but forced Republicans to adopt the zero option. Partisan zeal wasn't one of them. Republicans were ready to be pawns in a bipartisan game. But Obama's promise to bring the parties together played out in form (he courted Republicans) rather than substance (he declined to compromise). Republicans got nothing in the bill. That was fact number one. And after they objected to the cost of the House version ($819 billion, not counting the debt payments), the measure grew larger in the Senate. That was the second fact.

All the GOP has to do is keep dividing Congressional Democrats from the President and hitting on the size of the spending.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Riverboat Ring Your Bell, Fare Thee Well, Annabel: (brothersjuddblog.com)

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 9, 2009 5:24 PM