Now let's see just how far Obama's "I won" stance goes

While I've been pleasantly surprised by the amount of stones Barack Obama has shown in dealing with the Republican obstructionists in Congress, who subscribe to the Rush Limbaugh doctrine of "It's better for the nation's economy to completely collapse than for Obama to succeed", I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the fate of the stimulus package. It's bad enough that the package contains far too much in yet MORE tax cuts for the wealthy, put in as a gesture to placate conservatives for whom compromise is a dirty word, but the more the package is tinkered with in order to please John Boehner, the less effective it's likely to be. This is the first real test of Obama's much-lauded "bipartisanship", and what worries me is that in the end he's going to please nobody.

Paul Krugman, who has been critical of the amount devoted to tax cuts in this package, is softening his tone somewhat, perhaps so as not to give the Republicans any more clout. Today he gives a point-by-point rebuttal to John Boehner's vapors about the plan:

Some of these arguments are obvious cheap shots. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already made headlines with one such shot: looking at an $825 billion plan to rebuild infrastructure, sustain essential services and more, he derided a minor provision that would expand Medicaid family-planning services — and called it a plan to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives.”

But the obvious cheap shots don’t pose as much danger to the Obama administration’s efforts to get a plan through as arguments and assertions that are equally fraudulent but can seem superficially plausible to those who don’t know their way around economic concepts and numbers. So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major antistimulus arguments that have already surfaced. Any time you hear someone reciting one of these arguments, write him or her off as a dishonest flack.

...and he goes on to do just that. Read and study, my friends, because you WILL hear these around the water cooler and you WILL see these in letters in your local newspaper.

ThinkProgress has put together a compilation of what Obama's dinner companions have had to say:

You remember the night he dined with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and William Kristol a few days before the inauguration, right? Krauthammer wrote a column a day or so later claiming that Barack Obama's policies were in fact a vindication of George W. Bush, and I haven't had the heart to read the others.

As Steve at Last Chance Democracy Caf´ says, Obama gave peace a chance, and now it's time for the kickass part of bipartisanship:

There’s no denying that Obama tried; his initial stimulus package seemed designed as much to placate Republicans, as to please Democrats. His hope seemed to be that he could buy a little right wing love by putting way too much of the proposal’s spending into (relatively ineffective as stimulus) tax cuts, instead of public spending.

But congressional Republicans are having none of it. They may not have much actual power left, but that doesn’t seem to have put them in a mood to compromise. Either send up a pure George W. Bush-style tax cut package, they insist, or they’ll vote against the bill.

The major media, speaking right on cue, is spinning this as a test of Obama’s commitment to bipartisanship. I suppose they think that makes for a better story than the truth of Republican obstructionism. To these media “elites” the question now is whether Obama will be a good little post partisan president by giving GOP representatives everything they want, or an evil partisan politician (because he stands by his own principles as well as what might actually work).

So exactly what is it that the GOP wants?

This from The New York Times:

“Right now, given the concerns that we have over the size of this package and all of the spending in this package, we don’t think it’s going to work,” the House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And so if it’s the plan that I see today, put me down in the no column.”

While the plan can potentially pass the Democratic-dominated House without Republican support, it will continue to face opposition when it comes before the Senate, said Senator John McCain of Arizona, speaking on “Fox News Sunday.” At least two Republicans will need to approve the bill for a filibuster-proof majority vote of 60.

Senator McCain, who lost the presidential election to Mr. Obama in November, said that he planned to vote no unless the bill were changed.

So what sort of proposal will McCain and his defeated brethren support? From the same Times article:

“We need to make tax cuts permanent, and we need to make a commitment that there’ll be no new taxes,” Mr. McCain said. “We need to cut payroll taxes. We need to cut business taxes.”

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s extend and even expand Bush’s tax giveaways to the rich. I mean, that’s worked out real well for us so far, hasn’t it?

There’s no mystery about what’s going on here, of course. The GOP smells blood. What Obama intended as an extended hand they took as evidence of a weak spine: they’re starting to think — or at least to hope — they can push him around, at least a little. For what it’s worth, I strongly suspect they’re wrong. Underestimating Barack Obama’s political skill has generally proven to be a mistake. But Obama’s the only person who can prove it, and the way he can prove it, of course, is by pushing a strong stimulus package, reflecting Democratic Party values, through Congress.

The message would be unmistakable: if Republicans want to participate in the formation of future legislation in good faith, his door is open. But pure obstructionism will not be tolerated.

There is no such thing as bipartisanship when one party utterly refuses to compromise. We've seen where massive tax cuts for the wealthy gets us. We've seen where trickle-down economics -- that notion that if you just pack enough cash into the gaping maws of greedy bastards, they'll buy enough stuff to make up for the fact that the middle class doesn't exist anymore. I'm sorry, but not even John Thain (and of course Limbaugh is defending him, citing his $1.2 million office redecoration as an example of economic stimulus) can make up for the middle class' impact on the economy.

It's funny how George W. Bush's promises of being a compassionate conservative were completely ignored by the media once he was actually elected, but the same media -- you know, the ones wingnuts insist on believing is "liberal" just because Rachel Maddow has five hours a week on the teevee -- that admired George Bush's "guts" and "strength" are using Obama's promises to include Republicans as a cudgel against him, and against this plan. I mean, Paul Krugman can't be EVERYWHERE to knock down the gotcha idiocy of the nattering class.

We've seen what massive tax cuts for the wealthy do. We've seen the results of allowing the haves and the have-mores to stuff their pockets and wait for a few singles to trickle out of those pockets in our direction. If Americans wanted more of this, they would have elected John McCain and a Republican Congress. We didn't. So it's time for John Boehner and his peculiar obsession with contraceptives to shut the hell up. If the Obama plan doesn't work, they can bitch during the 2010 midterms.