In reading the story on the (still tentative) stimulus accord at the NY Times, one thought has stuck in my head:
We broke them.
I'm sure it was similar to the same feeling repugnant politicians had after the PATCO strike.
From the article:
Republicans were clearly irritated at the outcome and faulted those involved in working out the bargain. "When you say this was the best we could do, I disagree with you," Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on the floor. "This not remotely close to what we could have done if we had sat down in a true bipartisan fashion and found a better way."...
The administration had initially hoped that it could win the support of as many as 80 senators, but that goal disappeared after House Republicans voted unanimously against the measure. As questions were raised about the total spending, getting even three or four Republican senators to sign on became difficult.
Ms. Collins said she believed the changes had significantly improved the measure. Mr. Specter said that while he still had reservations, he had come to accept Mr. Obama’s push to enact the economic plan by mid-February. "I believe we do have to act," Mr. Specter said, "and under the circumstances this is the best we can do."
Clearly the repugnant politicians were flipping Obama the bird when they tried to show how "disciplined" they were in ignoring the will of the voters and Macro-economics 101.
This seems to me to be somewhat akin to what the PATCO workers did back in 1981. They struck, thinking they had the power to force enemy of the working and middle classes, Ronald Reagan, to make concessions to their horribly stressful workign conditions. Instead, EOTP Ronald Reagan fired the controllers, and PATCO union lost its power.
That is, they underestimated the other side's power and what they might do. And afterwards the entire movement as a whole lost a great deal of energy. So it will, I suspect, seem with the conservative repugnant movement: they are now officially in the horse latitudes. There is no wind at their sails.
At this point, although we have to fly Ted Kennedy back from Massachusetts to seal the deal, though, it appears as though the wackaloon wing of the repugant party is neutered, for at least a few years.
And in the future we don't have to hold out as many carrots to the repugnant politicians: we can use shock, and just like the mice who will stop jumping out of their cages if they get a shock for it, we can use basic Pavlovian psychology to ensure that repugnant politicians cease demanding that their suicidal, homicidal policies be the law of the land.
Bipartisanship on a date, as John Cole suggested, does not mean that one side might propose ordering Italian and the other side demands that dining fare consist of tire rims and anthrax.
We will need to use more Pavlovian psychology in the next few months, but I predict this: if Barack and Rahm continue on the path they're going, eventually we'll actually get some of the House members to "cross the picket line" and actually work for the American people.
And, despite the stated motives of this site, getting repugnant politicians to act in the interests of Americans might just be a good thing.