Politico reports that the Republicans are ironically feeling cash-strapped while RNC chairman Michael Steele peels the big ones from his fat roll. They say he’s profligate, but maybe Steele knows better. The subtext could be that he’s just getting his and if you hang with the Republicans you could eventually get yours too. That’s always been one of the Republicans strongest arguments: follow our ideology and get rich like us. So the fact that he’s laying it down for more elaborate floral arrangements may in fact be clever calculation.
Anyway, you can’t run the minority guy out — that’s not going to broaden the base for the midterms. It is likely that Steele knows that.
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet seeks to get the public option back in the health care bill. It seems that Republican intransigence on the issue could in fact provide an opportunity to get a stronger version through. Kudos to Senator Bennet for heading up the charge on this hot-button issue. If the Democrats are finally able to sack up and get what the majority of Americans want through Congress, they’ll have something to brag about in the upcoming elections. And the blue dog holdouts can even vote against it to please their constituents.
I’ve read several sky-is-falling articles recently in the New York Times. That’s not so rare, but what is rare is the number of sky-is-falling articles coming from a wide variety of publications. All the good news about a gently convalescing economy seems to be getting overshadowed by a growing raft of stories about the coming wave of new layoffs, deficits, debt, governmental gridlock, angry populist retaliation.
It’s certainly not hard to believe that the economic “gurus” who got us in to this mess are haplessly optimistic. It is also not hard to imagine that some of the more positive forecasters are in fact painting a rosy picture to gin up some optimism, which is the real fuel of any successful economy.
But there’s a a growing discomfort that the U.S. is rapidly becoming ungovernable as the Republicans play to their base by refusing to play along with anything. I think the Democrats are going to sorely miss this one opportunity they had pass some legislation if they keep getting cold feet about their reelections. It’s time to grow a pair and start muscling through some laws, the way the Republicans always have when in power. That’s what’s going to keep them in office… not vacillation and attempts at consensus building with a party that could give a shit about compromise of any degree.
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