It's somewhat puzzling why Obama would be watering down the Stimulus package this nation desperately needs in order to appease efforts and reach for the elusive, if not mythical, "bi-partisanship." There’s two possibilities: one, Obama is already screwing up, or, two, he’s setting the Republicans up to take a pasting in the court of public opinion.
It is obvious to anyone paying attention that Republicans do not respond to nice. They don’t understand it. The party is helmed and represented in government by right-wing ideologues whose shrill hysterics resemble nothing so much as the posturing of a closeted and repressed homosexual. They understand mean, they understand power, and it is for this—the stern father—which they secretly long.
The political calculus on this for the Republicans is simple: insist on as much stimulus-effectiveness destroying crap as possible in the bill. Then criticize it and vote against it. It either works or fails. If it fails, they’re still in with their dead-end base, and they get to say, see, we voted against it. If it works, they say, see, it’s because of the stuff we insisted on, and they’re still in with their dead-end base.
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that the Republican party are scheming prostitutes acting in the service of the wealthiest persons and corporations, and are to boot, vile excrement in serious need of nothing so much as a sound political bitch-slapping. How could Obama not know this?
Well, Obama is smarter than 99.9 percent of everyone, and we have to assume he understands this. So there’s a few possibilities. One is that he’s letting his idealism and his consequent desire for bi-partisanship get the better of him. One is that he’s just playing nice until he gets his cabinet confirmed, though Geithner’s confirmation might weigh against this interpretation. One is that he’s cleverly calculated that in order to ram through banking reform, he has to keep them as disarmed and unrigid as possible so he can have some advantage in the hardening of attitudes. And one is that he’s calculated that he can gain important leverage over the Republicans by repeatedly offering the olive-branch to these worthless scum until some threshold of time or obstructionism or public annoyance is reached, at which time he can get up and say, well, I tried, but no more Mr. Nice Guy.
What is clear, is that if Obama is not using his remarkable mind to outflank these weasely sewer rats in this or some even more clever way, he will find out the hard way that the only thing that is going to work—or be respected by the public who keeps voting for change—is a good smack down. And in the meantime, the world may just tumble over the edge into depression. Good Luck, Big O, and imo, it’s time to open that can of whoop-ass.