House Republican Leader John A. Boehner and his No. 2, Whip Eric Cantor, told their rank-and-file members Tuesday morning during a closed-door meeting to oppose the bill when it comes to the floor Wednesday, according to an aide familiar with the discussion. Boehner told members that he's voting against the stimulus, and Cantor told the assembled Republicans that there wasn't any reason for them to support the measure, according to another person in the room. Cantor and his whip team are going to urge GOP members to oppose it.
No reason to support the bill, huh? Not the removal of family-planning assistance? Not tax cuts? Not getting rid of massive amounts of infrastructure spending? All of these concessions offered by President Obama and Congressional Democrats - given in direct response to GOP whining - aren't reasons to vote for it?
Excuse me, I need to find my fainting couch, I'm so surprised.
This is a good scheme. The Republicans get to eviscerate bill after bill, get rid of one good idea after another, weaken - perhaps terminally - our chances to actually jump-start our economy, and then they don't have to risk alienating their rabid base by actually voting for a Democratic bill.
This is getting far past the point where President Obama deserves the benefit of the doubt. Now that he's offered concrete concessions to the GOP only to have them publicly throw them back in his face, there simply isn't any super-secret strategy that can rescue this or make it all make sense. There isn't any Machiavellian strategy left for President Obama or the Congressional Dems to come up with that will show how they can out-maneuver the GOP. Instead, they're just doing the same thing they've always done.
The Republican party will not give Obama, Pelosi and Reid anything. They will not vote for a stimulus bill. They will not vote for it on the plain, they will not vote for it in the rain. The will not vote for it in a car, they will not vote for it from afar. They will not vote for your stimulus bill, O-P-R, they will not vote for it because they are short-sighted, amoral scumbags who care nothing about this country or its citizens and will actively work to make things worse simply because now they get to blame Democrats for it.
Excuse me, I think I lost my rhyme and meter there.
Either the Democrats can write and pass bills that help this country, or they can play beltway games which show how, fundamentally, they are no better than the GOP. That's their choice. It's simple, stark and not subject to super-secret plans in back rooms. We're past that now.
