Fucking democrats.

Don't we try this every time? We extend olive branches, and the republicans take them and wipe shit all over them and then throw them back at us, aiming for our eyes.

Fucking take the power while you have it and wield it like a sword. Don't negotiate with those terrorists.

More of the inane media notion of bipartisanship.

After not a single House Republican voted for the stimulus bill - and they had made clear they wouldn't support it even if the Dems removed some spending they didn't like and added $300 B in tax cuts - Matt Lauer interviewed the President's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, on the Today Show this morning. And one of Matt's first questions was essentially is the President going to pressure the Democrats to move to the center in order to attract Republican votes.

Why bother having two parties? Everyone (in the media) would be so much happier if only everyone in politics would agree (with the Republicans).

Not lately, though. I wonder if they still have that plank in there about "eliminating the myth of the Separation between Church and State"?

Troglodytes. The whole lot.

What struck me about Armey's little performance, aside from the fact that he appeared drunk, was the bone-headed sexism of his treatment of Walsh. He considers it beneath him, obviously, to listen to some woman's "prattling" about a subject, but what really frosts him is to be questioned at all. A proud authoritarian, he lives in a world where he is always right, multiple electoral defeats be damned. No wonder he's turned to the bottle.

A more important question is why he would be on the set of Hardball. He's a washed-up irrelevance, by any normal understanding of the term, but, like many other failed and discredited Republicans, he hasn't been told, and the media still think he and his ilk have something worthwhile to say. I hope that performance puts that notion to rest.

Given the reality demonstrated yesterday through Dick Armey's rants at Joan and the vote in the House on the economic package, it seems to me that Harry Reid now is likely to be the key determinant of whether a Democratic package of legislation can get enacted.

The Republicans in the House, while repulsive, are completely irrelevant. As demonstrated yesterday, their votes, and the votes of some of the Blue Dogs (as long as they don't all go over to the dark side) simply don't matter for getting legislation passed in the House.

However, when we get to the Senate, it's another story entirely. Because of the the likely 59-41 breakdown (if we assume Franken eventually will be seated), by voting in lockstep as they did in the House, Republicans can block everything. That is, they can block everything as long as Harry continues his weak act from the previous session and allows Republicans to filibuster without really having to filibuster.

The Lilly Ledbetter act passing last week I view as an anomaly. It received the votes of all 57 Democrats present (Kennedy was not present) and the votes of 4 Republicans. Three of those are women (Snowe, Collins and Murkowski) who were joined by Arlen Specter. The vote tally is linked at my name. Although Snowe and Collins are widely viewed as among the most reasonable of the Republicans, I just don't see this combination of votes hanging together when the stimulus bill or other bills important to Obama and Democrats in general come up.

Reid simply must make the Republicans in the Senate actively work to be obstructionist. If he merely assents to everything requiring 60 votes, he misses out on a tremendous opportunity. If he instead forces the Republicans into real, talk till you pee in your pants filibusters, then the American people will be able to see the lengths to which Republicans give lip service to trans-partisanship while toeing the line of the Dick Armey memos.

Hi Glenn,

This is more a question than a comment, as I find myself genuinely unsure about, or maybe more exactly moving between radically different opinions, on this pretty fundamental corollary to your post here.

The issue is this: should Democratic leaders, and particularly Obama, be trying to appeal to a broad, bi- or even post-partisan group of Americans/voters? I agree 100% about the leadership of the Republican Party, at least as of the last couple decades, and I think Armey is as exemplary a representative of that category as could be found. But I'm not always sure about the folks, y'know?

Which is to say, even if the post-partisan olive branches get shat upon by the Republican leadership, or even every Republican in Washington, do you think it might make a difference with the Republican voters? Or at least a sizeable enough percentage of them to make a difference? After all, if the problem with Kansas is that many of those voters seem to vote against their best interests on a variety of issues, maybe this can be a small way to help rectify that problem?

Again, I'm genuinely unsure, but would very much appreciate your thoughts on these corollary and perhaps even more important questions.

Thanks,

Ben

Yes, that's long been a euphemism for Democratic capitulation. However, the recent Obama olive branches and subsequent Republican whitewash on the stimulus package brings to mind a new possibility -- when you know your calls for cooperation will go unheeded, all the more reason to make the call. It exposes Republicans as obstructionist, at which Dems can shrug their shoulders, say they tried, and pass their agenda. One hopes, anyway....

If the dems had pushed a bill they liked through congress without any republican votes and gloated about it, they would look arrogant and vindictive. As it is, the democrats are pushing a bill they like through congress without any republican votes and the REPUBLICANS look arrogant and vindictive.

With Obama you really don't know what he is doing, because he is very good at politics, much better than me. I didn't understand that get-together with conservative opinion makers. It seemed like a silly thing to do. When you see Rush Limbaugh fly off the handle and start ranting as he was not invited, you realize what was going on. You can't exclude someone from a gathering of their friends if you don't invite their friends to a party.