This Will Backfire

The Obama Stimulus Package passed in the House yesterday, but not one Republican voted for it, this after all of Obama's outreach and meetings and compromises and happy hours.

I got the news of its passage during an event hosted by The Nation and Air America media about the progressive movement's role in an Obama Administration. Shortly thereafter, an audience member asked Eli Pariser (executive director of MoveOn.org) if he thought that Obama put too much focus on bipartisanship with all of this outreach and meetings and compromises and happy hours.

Eli's answer was essentially this: Obama's bipartisanship was less about wooing Republican members of congress and more about wooing Republican voters in America. If he got their support, great, but he didn't really need it from a getting votes point-of-view.

Already, media pundits on the right are calling it a slap in the face to Obama or a failed attempt at bipartisanship.

But what President Obama did was demonstrate an ability to compromise with the opposition. He gave the Republican Party a chance to participate in (and even take some credit for) a massive stimulus plan. He let them be a part of something huge (and maybe not huge enough), and they chose to rebuff him.

The Republican arguments that I've heard against the stimulus package don't make any sense. (TPM is documenting them well.) It's not just that they're proposing proven-to-fail Hoover policies (don't spend money on anything and lower taxes on rich people); they don't seem to understand how anything works. One fella even said that we shouldn't invest in Amtrak because they don't turn a profit. Well, buster, that's not why you invest in Amtrak. You invest in Amtrak because it will provide jobs and improve infrastructure. Their profit is irrelevant to this economic mess.

Anyway, this will bite the Republican party in the ass. People want change. Hell, even Republican voters want change. Once they wake up to the fact that they're supporting a do-nothing party, well, they'll stop supporting them.

I think Obama should keep reaching out, keep inviting them to be a part of building something, and keep letting them rebuff him if they feel they must. It won't show that President Obama is a failure at bipartisanship. It will demonstrate the Republican Party's total irrelevance.