Republicans Reject Stimulus, Prefer to Gamble

Here we sit at the beginning of time. President Obama and Congress have passed their stimulus package, the Treasury has outlined its bailout plans (with various levels of clarity), and now we begin the truly interesting experiment. If all this spending and tax cutting and backstopping actually takes hold, we should see the hard times bottom out later in the year. Probably much later. But if all of this is spitting into a ferocious wind, where economic discpline will impose its own plan, then we are truly headed for times inconceivable to a population largely spoiled by comfort and ease.

This same population, and appealed to by a duplicitous group of Republicans in office, remains largely ignorant of the details of what has happened, and unable to determine whether something is working, beyond their own crude yardsticks of employment and gas prices. Hence they don't know how tight the credits markets became back in November and December of 2008, or that previous efforts by the government may have served to ease corporate strains to a degree.

This bill, newly passed but yet to be clarified and refined by both house of Congress, received little to no Republican support. In other words, Republicans either felt it would be better to do nothing at all, or, they were working on the assumption that whatever benefits the bills provide will trickle down to their home states, while allowing them plausible deniability for any future suffering, and as though none of this arose from rather laissez faire Republican policy to begin with. It's a bold and stupid gamble, cynical and hypocritical, and we can only hope that America actually benefits from those politicians willing to do something.

Let's be clear. These problems did not begin with Obama, though Republicans will be looking each day to portray any future difficulties as his doing. Even today in the Wall Street Journal, one particularly vapid opinion piece mocks Obama for not having solved our international problems; mind you, these are problems of Republican policy creation, and problems unsolvable in a mere three weeks on the job in the middle of financial meltdown. It's also a piece that dismisses the positive words from difficult nations (whether Iran or Russia), while outright dismissing the heightened respect from allies as being meaningless. If the author had a truly worthy point, we might link and name him, but ideological fools are best left to jest in their own courts.

Of course in mocking Obama as a messiah, the Republicans can then pose the question of how that messiah is failing. No thinking person or voter for Obama actually saw him as such, but Republicans right now are playing for political mileage, and for ideological purity, rather than for the sake and safety of American prosperity. En masse they have sacrificed credibility, opting to do nothing and yet will still reap whatever rewards fall to their plates.

Hypocrites, and hypocrisy.

And here, from Time Magazine, the Republican Party's multiple personalities:

When President Barack Obama took his stimulus road show into Florida on Tuesday, Governor Charlie Crist was waiting, tapping his foot. Crist, a Republican, is actually six months ahead of Washington in the stimulus game: in August, in response to his state's economic implosion, he launched Accelerate Florida, which is pouring out more than $28 billion in stored-up state funds for the kind of infrastructure and school-construction projects that are still being debated inside the Beltway. (See pictures from the historic Election Day.)
At the time Crist announced Accelerate Florida, few if any fellow Republicans seemed to condemn the idea. And that makes it all the more curious to Crist and other moderate Republicans that now, when states' budget crises are even worse, conservative Republican governors in states like Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alaska are following GOP leaders on Capitol Hill in adamant opposition to Obama's federal stimulus package.

"I see this package as a pragmatic, commonsense opportunity to move forward," Crist, who appeared with Obama in economically beleaguered Fort Myers today to tout the stimulus, told TIME on Monday night. "I didn't campaign for Obama, we don't agree on everything, but he's my President, and my job is to help Florida stay in the black." Introducing Obama at the town-hall meeting, Crist said it was not just important "that we support this stimulus package" but that "we do it in a bipartisan way ... It's about rising above" partisanship.

Crist's puzzlement at his colleagues' opposition reflects a fundamental divide in his party. If the stimulus debate has solidified Republican ideology in Washington, it has further exposed the party's fault lines at the state level — where many believe the GOP's future direction will be decided after the electoral disaster of 2008. For Crist and other moderate, bipartisan governors like California's Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vermont's Jim Douglas, backing the $800 billion recovery bill taking shape in Congress isn't just an act of economic self-interest; it also lets them showcase a less ideological conservatism that they insist voters want in the 21st century.