Chris Muir’s Day by Day Cartoon

Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal today, thinks that President Obama has made a colossal blunder even while getting a big “win” with the House Democrat’s passing of the Economic Stimulus Bill.

President Obama could have made big history here. Instead he just got a win. It’s a missed opportunity.

It’s a win because of the obvious headline: Nine days after inauguration, the new president achieves a major Congressional victory, House passage of an economic stimulus bill by a vote of 244-188. It wasn’t even close. This is major.

But do you know anyone, Democrat or Republican, dancing in the street over this? You don’t. Because most everyone knows it isn’t a good bill, and knows that its failure to receive a single Republican vote, not one, suggests the old battle lines are hardening. Back to the Crips versus the Bloods. Not very inspiring.

The president will enjoy short-term gain. In the great circle of power, to win you have to look like a winner, and to look like a winner you have to win. He did and does. But for the long term, the president made a mistake by not forcing the creation of a bill Republicans could or should have supported.

Consider the moment. House Republicans had conceded that dramatic action was needed and had grown utterly supportive of the idea of federal jobs creation on a large scale. All that was needed was a sober, seriously focused piece of legislation that honestly tried to meet the need, one that everyone could tinker with a little and claim as their own. Instead, as Rep. Mike Pence is reported to have said to the president, “Know that we’re praying for you. . . . But know that there has been no negotiation [with Republicans] on the bill—we had absolutely no say.” The final bill was privately agreed by most and publicly conceded by many to be a big, messy, largely off-point and philosophically chaotic piece of legislation. The Congressional Budget Office says only 25% of the money will even go out in the first year. This newspaper, in its analysis, argues that only 12 cents of every dollar is for something that could plausibly be called stimulus.

Obama should have been reminded of his “lipstick on a pig” line from the campaign as this bill is almost total pork, and tryin’ to hold the Dem Wit’s feet to the fire on this one is worse than tryin’ to catch a greased pig!

Noonan is correct in her analysis — Obama could have pulled off the coup of his political career if he had actually thrown the GOP congressmen a bone or two, let them get some real input into the House Stimulus Bill, made it impossible for them to not have some ownership, some skin in this game. If that had happened it would be game over — Dem control for probably as long as I’ll be around.

He didn’t — it didn’t — The Dems own this one lock, stock and barrel! Not sure what the Senate GOP members are made of — sure hope that they get some inspiration from their House brethren and get ready to rumble — make that filibuster. Yeah folks — filibuster like you mean it and like it might be the last time. If MN breaks for Franken, it just might be your last time.

Technorati Tags: Economic Stimulus Bill, President Obama

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 10:43 am and is filed under Dem Wit Congress, POTUS Obama, Stimulate This!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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