This is just an update of my last two entries. It's just that Obama's response to Republican obstructionism was long due. Has anybody told Chris Dodd and Harry Reid that the Republican Senators are not their friends?
Yesterday we could finally hear Obama taking the case for the stimulus package to the American people. That was the "Enough!" we were expecting to hear again after the historical night of Obama's acceptance of the Democratic nomination. A bit late but it's a start. By the way, has anybody send the message to Democratic Senators like Chris Dodd? His is just an example of the lack of discipline and the poor defense of its ideas the Democratic Party has shown during these years. Otherwise, you could not understand how people who have been beaten so badly in the last two elections, whose ideas have been crown with a recession comparable only to the Great Depression (and from which we have not seen the worst yet but we may if China decides to give priority to its domestic market instead to its exports or we have to face an early peak-oil) can keep their discipline and even dictate terms to the new Democratic majority in the Senate, which is too afraid of putting the bill to a vote for not looking rude exposing the fierce obstructionism of its opponents or not looking bipartisan enough. Yeah! The Republicans are hitting their administration with an axe all day long but they don't want to look angry or impolite. No wonder the polls are showing declining support for the package. The public is only hearing the Republican distorted version of it. Even the label "stimulus" was a Republican creation and, as always, they made the first movement to define the debate in terms of the very short-term and with words previously reshaped and cooked in the Far Right factory. Jay Ambrose, victim of my previous entry, is just an example of the debate the Republican Right Wing, just timidly interrupted by isolated Democratic mumbling, has imposed as they have imposed on almost any issue. There are interesting articles in Politico about the poor way Democratic Senators have been advocating for the stimulus plan, incluying Chris Dodds involuntary support to the Republican bark, while Republican Senators has been making pass their slogans for economic theory.
Let me repeat this prediction: Expect a Gingrich-style obstructionism with 2012 as the Republican goal, no matter the cost. This prediction comes from my entry "The best act of ventriloquism of our times". Those still believing in unicorns need to be ready to face the fact that the moon is no made of cheese. You need to make vulnerable Republican Senators face their constituents and answer for their vote (for which you have to first put a bill on the floor, no matter the effect on Reid's ego). Defending their obstructionism is not going to be easy for vulnerable Republicans if you throw at them the hard facts like the Moody's report, the record of the Bush administration and the report of the American Society of Civil Engineers. If you continue doing what you are doing, dear Democratic Senators, just insinuiting shy slogans, at which then the Republican noise machine manly yells and then reshapes at their advantage (Like when you just timidly say that you are for American jobs only for the Republicans then say that tax cuts are the most immediate way of creating American jobs and that you're pork-spending socialists), 2010 may be the year of Sarah Palin and of the Republican come back and, of course, of your obvious irrelevance.
Yesterday Paul Krugman was commenting in Rachel's program some of the points we have been trying to communicate in these last two entries. He commented the effect of the Reagan's reforms on the morale of regulatory agencies. Nevertheless, we must mention two important factors that prevented this problem to arise before George W. Bush:
- Clinton's fiscal responsibility
- The way Bush slashed the budget of regulatory agencies like SEC, Department of Labor, and EPA not to mention the way the Attorney General's office was mismanaged by Alberto Gonzalez to fill it with ideologues coming from the now famous Pat Robertson School of Law.
My predictions were right but useless because very few people read them. OK, but to feed my vanity is not what matters the most here. Share this entry; write letters to expose the mediocrity of the Republican Right; call your Democratic Senators demanding a more manly attitude; make your voice heard because the word "catastrophe" mentioned yesterday by Obama is not an exaggeration and the Obama administration is something nothing should take for granted.