In an earlier post, SusanG quoted Josh Marshall at TPM to the effect that the Republican's theatrical bellyaching about the stimulus package is over, in sum, "maybe one or two percent of the program total."
Mike Madden at Salon provides an explanation:
And about those House Republicans, the ones who are still crowing about last week's shutout: Many of them may wind up flipping too. "I think [the White House] will go to them a bit, they will come to us a bit, and plenty will flip for the final vote," one Democratic aide said about House Republicans, echoing what some in the GOP have been saying privately, as well. "Many are planning to vote yes on the final vote -- this was basically a free vote for them to side with their leadership for the first round and side with constituents for the second round."
So, the idea seems to be that Washington Republicans are engaging in purely ideological shadowplay for the benefit, not of their constituents, but their party bosses. And the effect of this shadowplay will be to wipe out programs that have little appreciable effect on the cost of the stimulus, and that no one but Republican bosses would have bothered to complain about, except for the theatrical bellyaching.
Such programs include, again quoting Madden, "money for the National Endowment for the Arts, $1 billion for the 2010 Census, $600 million for the government to buy fuel-efficient cars."
Now, I don't know about you, but I am confused. Why is anyone in their right mind considering sacrificing programs that no one really opposes, in order to get votes that aren't needed anyway, to please no one but the bosses of a regional party, who neither have nor want any reasonable arguments for sacrificing those programs in the first place?
Doing so might seem like "bipartisanship" if you stand far enough away and squint, but closer-up it sure looks more like madness to me.