Forget bipartisanship, just fix the economy (Lyons / Delaware Cty PA Daily Times)

[struggle4progress]

Thursday, February 5, 2009 5:31 AM EST

For President Obama to treat individual Republicans with civility is one thing. Etiquette, however, has its limits. Embracing “bipartisanship” as a political goal can be a snare and a delusion ...

The last time we had a new Democratic president, essentially the same thing happened. Republican congressmen voted unanimously against President Clinton’s 1993 tax and budget proposals, uniformly predicting doom. Raising marginal income-tax rates a few points on the wealthy, they charged, would lead to economic ruin. Instead, the exact opposite happened; over the ensuing eight years, the nation witnessed the creation of 25 million new jobs, a balanced federal budget and steadily rising prosperity.

Today, an act of historical memory’s required to recall that when President Bush took office in 2001, people actually worried about paying down the national debt too fast. No problem. The new president embraced what it’s tempting to call “Limbaugh-nomics,” the absurd belief that tax cuts invariably lead to greater government revenues and more and better jobs ...

... the past 16 years couldn’t have done more to expose the wrongheadedness of the Republican “War on Arithmetic” had it been a laboratory experiment. GOP tax-cut theology is sheer superstition, on the level with sacrificing goats and reading tea leaves. Meet grandstanding GOP congressmen halfway? What for? Democrats swept the 2006 and 2008 congressional elections precisely because the public finally gets it. Pretty much everybody except Limbaugh’s faithful listeners has caught on ...

http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2009/02/05/opinion/doc498a5dd30092a407306109.txt

[ima_sinnic]

1. recommended! this is exactly what I wrote in an e-mail to Obama, though a lot longer

I am going to send him a link to the article.

I wish he would just tell the republikkklans to F*Off, that this is the way it is now going to be and they can piss and moan all they want, it ain't gonna go away.

[Berry Cool]

2. "Limbaugh-nomics"! I love it!!

That's even better than Reaganomics. Stick the blowhard who's plugging it now with it. He should have to live with it.

[BirminghamExaminer]

3. Hear hear!

I wrote something along the same lines today for The Examiner. Maybe others are starting to wake up out of the fog the TV media has blasted us with by talking to nobody but Republican senators about the stimulus bill.

[PurityOfEssence]

4. Legislators ask for permission; Executives lead

Needing bipartisanship reeks of seeking future deniability. If one has the right answer, then after a few curt invitations to help out, the obstructionists should be rolled over.

Bring it to the floor. Make them filibuster. Force THEM to solve it. Don't just give away program after program, hoping that someday they'll FINALLY love you and join up. It didn't work for Bill Clinton: he STILL thinks that if he just moves the party a little more to the right, they'll finally come around, when they're huddled around their cauldrons in dank grottoes somewhere even as I type, trying to destroy him. Obama's desire for bipartisanship is following the same fruitless course.

Want to know the really scary part? I don't think they have confidence that any of the plans bandied about will actually WORK, and that's why they want the reactionaries to sign on.

Regardless, if one DOES think that one has the right idea, letting sweet, airy "togetherness" stand in the way of "doing the right thing" is astonishing.

I don't think that anyone knows how to stop this mess. That includes Krugman, Buffett, Soros, Gates or anyone else. Nobody's buying anything. Restaurants are going to die like flies. Auto Dealerships, spas, amusement parks, theaters, appliance stores...the list goes on.

This is the time for a cocksure--even arrogant--leader. Obama sounds like that at times, but some of the recent warning signs are disturbing; the way they got punked out of the contraception provision in the House and didn't even get ONE vote doesn't bode well. (Aw, but then again, caving to RELIGION is a leitmotif of this operation, so that's just fitting.)

Hey, at least he's not Kerry...