Thank Goodness

Thank goodness President Obama is going on TV tonight to advocate for the stimulus bill. It's about time. He has made the mistake that Democrats continue to make over and over and over; he let the Repubs frame the debate about the stimulus plan.

Obama's call for bipartisanship is necessary and welcome. However, you cannot be bipartisan if only one party shows up. After having his outstretched hand slapped away so completely by the Repubs in Congress, Obama should have taken to the airwaves immediately and said in no uncertain terms that if they are not willing to come to the table, fine. They can starve. However, he did not do that, and let them have the microphone for several days, days in which they spread misinformation about the stimulus package and continued their tired call for tax cuts. Why, why on earth do the Dems continue to allow these extreme conservative voices to control the debate? I am an enormous Obama supporter; however, he needs to start using the same elbows he uses when playing basketball against the Repubs.

It's true that the American people are ready for bipartisanship and an end to the dysfunctional way things have been done in Washington. However, it is profoundly clear that the Republicans in Congress, now with almost zero moderate voices, are not only digging their heels in the partisan dirt, they are PROUD of it. Putting their party's renewal above getting this country out of economic quicksand, they are once again choosing self-interest above the greater good.

And once again, to my deep, profound, unutterable dismay, the Democrats, including Obama, are letting them get away with it.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) actually compared (favorably!) the Repub minority in Congress to the Taliban, saying that they have learned what it means to be insurgents from the despised gang of thugs in Afghanistan. Can you IMAGINE the outrage we would be hearing if a Democrat had dared say something so outlandish? Rush Limbaugh would spontaneously combust! But a Republican member of Congress is allowed to say these despicable things and nothing happens. Nothing.

We won. The Democrats overwhelmingly won the last two elections, first Congress in 2006 and then the Presidency in 2008. Why are we bending over backwards to accommodate individuals whose policies the citizens of this country decided were bankrupt!? It baffles me.

Obama wants to turn the page and create a different tone in Washington and I admire him for that. But if the Repubs won't join him at the table, then don't feed them at all. Wasn't it Obama himself who said just a few days ago "I won."

There are many out there who capture what it is I'm so livid about in words more powerful than mine. Here are just a couple:

Paul Krugman on MSNBC on February 6th: "How much bipartisan outreach can you have when 36 out of 41 republican senators take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh?" Later in the same interview: "At this point we have a Republican party that, except for a few members, is committed to just doing more of what we did during the last eight years. Obama has to disregard that."

Drew Westen on Huff Post: "In fact, the 2006 and 2008 Senate and Congressional elections cleared out all but a handful of moderate Republicans from Washington, leaving no one to reach across the aisle to but economic and social extremists who have had no interest in attending the President's bipartisan party. They are more interested in salvaging their own party and figuring out how to return themselves to relevance. They are precisely the politicians the American people made clear in November they do not want shaping further policy." He goes on, offering a suggestion of what Obama should say to those Repub members of Congress who are gleefully shouting the same old "tax and spend-evil Liberal" nonsense: "...Senator, you and your party are the ones whose fiscal irresponsibility and failed ideology have saddled our children and grandchildren with more debt in the last eight years than all the debt amassed in the prior 200 years combined, and your radical economic ideology has led to a financial crisis and soaring unemployment like we haven't seen since the Great Depression. If you have something constructive to offer, I'm all ears. But if all you have to offer is partisan sniping and the same tired ideas that are costing people their homes, their jobs, and their savings, neither I, nor the American people, have any interest in hearing from you further." (emphasis added).