Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Hypocrisy (Lamar vs. the Stimulus, Pt. 3)

“As I listened to the president I thought he wanted to change the way Washington works,” he says. “[We should] talk to one another and come up with something that both Republicans and Democrats agree on, not just, ‘we won the election, we will write the bill, and see if we can pick off two or three senators.’”

The hypocrisy of a Republican saying “hey, he promised he wasn’t going to do things the way we did things” aside, no, wait, let’s take a second to focus on the hypocrisy of a Republican saying, “hey, he promised he wasn’t going to do things the way we did things.”

Besides which, it’s total bull.

Every Republican that wanted a seat at the table got one. Democrats were cutting things out of the stimulus bill right and left every day, just to accommodate Republicans. The bill is 40% tax cuts to start with, just to accommodate Republicans. That $15,000 incentive to buy a new house? Just to accommodate Republicans.

It’s your fault if you didn’t join in on the fun. But you decided to play the obstructionist. And at the end of the day, no matter what the Democrats did, the Republican refuse to acknowledge that Democrats were doing any compromising at all.

Was it because there’s no political advantage for Republicans to sign onto a bill the American people would associate 100% with President Obama anyway? Especially when it’s not a silver bullet anyway?

You could have put your fingerprints all over it if you wanted to, Senator. The changes were coming fasts and furious. But you didn’t want to.

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