Think about bipartisanship, and consider why Repubs would choose to vote against the stimulus?

FLASHBACK: McConnell Said Stimulus Not Going To Have Any Problem ‘Getting Over 60 Votes’

That was then, this is now:

Bipartisanship? DeMint Predicts Zero Senate GOP Votes For Obama’s Recovery Package.:



The bill is part tax cuts, part spending so why would Repubs vote against it?

Republicans seen to believe it's their way or the highway. They're still playing games. Well, House Repubs just got shown the highway.

Screw 'em if they can't say yes to a bill that clearly in the best interest of Americans.

If they ever decide to engage in a genuine debate, backed up by genuine actions, they can claim a hand in helping to solve the economic crisis.

You can not play softball with Republicans. For 8 years we have known that they are PSYCHOPATHS.

Forget Bi-partisan. Crush these smarmy lunatic Republicans and treat them like they treat everyone else. The country is already down the tubes.. there is no time left to mess around.

We have to rebuild this country or it's all over.. curtain time...

You have to match strength to strength. Brute force to brute force. That's all they know and definitely all they respect.

This was really a meaningless vote by the Republicans that their trying to make into some principled stand. They new that this is just the House version of the stimulus bill. They also know that the bill will now go to the Senate were a Senate version will be passed. Of course they know that then a joint committee will iron-out the differences and a final bill will be presented for their vote. So they could vote NO on the House version knowing they couldn't stop its passage and that in the end it would have little to no effect on the final bill. Pure grandstanding making a big deal out of something that in the end means nothing. If anything they just demonstrated to the public how little power they have in the House of Representatives. They just need to realize that they can either be part of the solution or sit on the sidelines and whine but their 'solutions' have been rejected by the voting public and it is time to try other methods.

lockstep failure as principled. They couldn't stop it, they knew that. This is a bill that if they could have stopped it, would have resulted in all hell breaking loose. So they basically used this as an opportunity to try to gain ground: let's all vote against it because it's not going to fail anyway, and then say that we did it on principle (wink, wink).

The Repubs got played.






Edited typos.

If President Obama's economic plans bear fruit, then there is nothing that can be done to turn the current Democratic House and Senate seats to Repuke. If there is a perception that those plans have either failed, or been insufficiently successful, then the Rethugs want to be able to say that their fingerprints aren't on the discredited plans.

It's like life insurance, you are betting you will die, the life insurance company is betting that you won't.

And they tend to use them to hand themselves. Let's hope that the voters DO remember how obstructive the GOP was when confronted with bipartisanship.

I suggest that the GOP has basically decided that there is really nothing to lose, but an incredible amount to gain if the stimulus fails--or is very slow to produce results.

Remember the GOP spent the last half of the twentieth century considering FDR the absolute devil. They really didn't get a chance until Reagan to make any real progress taking the country their direction.

I think what they are doing is setting up for a 2010 campaign where republicans can argue that "the economy isn't recovering fast enough, but it would have if the President didn't ram through the biggest spending bills of our lifetime...and instead listened to us."

Personally, I think they'll lose the argument, but I'm pretty sure that's what they are thinking.

And I understand at least one GOPer, Senator Snowe, is already backing the package.

Go figure.

I'd say lets wait and see. Republican Senators in hard red states aren't going to vote for it...Senators whose job could be on the line or benefit from the stimulus are going to have a hard time making a decision.