Good For The House Republicans

A momentary display of spine. Not a single one voted for the abomination. Limbaugh sums things up (but I think he said this before the vote was taken):

This, to me, is the signal that he knows he's in trouble. Now, he's not in trouble in terms of getting his bill eventually passed. But I'll tell you, more and more people are now starting to see that this is not a stimulus bill at all, it's what we've been calling porkulus. It's just a standard budget bill that has a 30% increase in the budget, is what it is. It's all it is, and if you look, there's been a conservative analysis of the bill suggests that only 12¢ of every dollar will go to genuine stimulus things like creating jobs and so forth. But they are part-time jobs. They're static jobs that have a start and end time. They're not career jobs, which is a big difference. And, of course, the news is getting out about just how filled with pork this is, how typical it is of the way Washington spends money. The Republicans in the House seem to be holding firm.
He doesn't need a Republican vote at all. I think the pressure... The result of the meeting was he knows he's in trouble 'cause he desperately wants Republican support, 'cause when this goes down the tubes, he wants to be able to say that all of Washington was complicit. He doesn't want Republicans to be able to run reelection campaigns in 2010 and 2012 saying they opposed this when we're in the mess that's even deeper than it is today. So he wants Republicans there. He doesn't want a repeat of what happened in 1993 where not one Republican voted for the Clinton budget, which then led to the Republicans', partly a factor, taking over the House in 1994. He doesn't need the Republicans at all. As I said yesterday, why in the world...? If this is so great, if this is so wonderful, if this package of his is going to reignite an economy like we've never seen before, why wouldn't he want all the credit?

Do you realize he could destroy the Republican Party forever? If his plan works, and none of them vote for it, can you imagine what he could say four years from now? It would be the end of the Republican Party. And if that's the case, why not do it?

Why the Democrats are considered to be "good on the economy" has always been beyond me. They've always been a bunch of economy-killing socialist hacks ala Atlas Shrugged, interested only in graft and political payoffs, with zero chance of being able to fix a damned thing. Republicans would be idiots not to let them take full credit for this disaster.