Posted by
GFC on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 4:29:50 PM
President Obama has been calling for Republicans to not politicize the stimulus package. He doesn't need any Republican votes to pass the package so why does it matter what Republicans say about it or how they vote.
The only way Republicans can stop any package is with a near unanimous fillibuster attempt. Perhaps this is the sort of politicizing to which Mr. Obama is opposed, but it doesn't appear that Republicans are likly to do this. The other Republican option is to pull Democrats into opposition. If they succeeded in doing this wouldn't it be the opposite of Politicizing the issue?
In fact that is exactly what happened when the economic crisis struck last year. The package was put together. The President, most congressional Democrats and a few Republicans supported it, but most Republicans and many Democrats opposed the package. The first attempt to pass it failed. It eventually passed though there was still significant opposition on both sides of the isle.
The lesson from this recent episode is that opposition to a massive, rushed stimulus package can bring the parties together. Republicans opposed it even though it was there President who was pushing it and a significant number of Democrats opposed it even though it was the opposition's President who proposed it. Party wasn't attempting to gain advantage over party, rather individual representatives were making a tough choice with less partisan thinking than is generally present.
How then is current opposition to a additional massive, rushed stimulus package suddenly politicizing the issue? Republican opposition hasn't changed in any substantive way. It wasn't partisan then and it isn't partisan now. The Democrats who opposed the package before, may support it currently, but that is likely to be because they don't have an election looming in front of them. The more conservative Democrats may have opposed the package before knowing that it wasn't popular with their constituents.
Perhaps the best way to measure the politicization of stimulus is to track the Democrats who once opposed it with their votes and now support it. Were they just making a political calculation to keep office in the near-term knowing that if they retained their seats they could then pass a similar measure? The electorate has two years to forget about the stimulus and government intrusions on the private sector which come with it. There was more Democrat risk in supporting stimulus then compared to now.
President Obama is the one person most responsible for politicization of stimulus. He seeks political cover. If Republicans oppose the stimulus and it goes bad, Democrats will be in trouble. They control the government and the successes and failures are theirs. If Republicans support stimulus and it all goes bad, the Democrats can claim that they aren't to blame because after all even the Republicans thought it was a good idea.
In the simplist terms, the economy can either get better or worse. Republicans can either support or oppose stimulus. This means there are basically four possible futures: (1)Republican support & gets better, (2)Republican support & gets worse, (3)Republican opposition & gets better, (4)Republican opposition & gets worse. Of these four options, the one with the most potential to help the Republicans and hurt the Democrats is number 4. It is this eventuality President Obama wishes to avoid. If number 1 happens Democrats as the party in power probably get more benefit than Republicans. If number 2 happens it gets even better for Democrats. If number 3 happens, at Democrats can claim Republicans offered no better to at least mitigate damage.
Number 4 is scary for Democrats and President Obama. They want to avoid that so they are politicizing stimulus while accusing the Republicans of doing so. That is textbook hypocracy.