Some
conservatives have been
critical of the
Republicans' handling of the
stimulus debate. Sure, Republicans would have been better off
uniting around a plausible alternative to the stimulus package.
There's a reason the polls showed more people turning against the
stimulus as a result of Republican attacks than turning toward
the GOP. Republicans will eventually have to have their own
solutions to win again.
The
much-maligned Jim DeMint plan contained some sound policies,
but it was vulnerable to the same criticisms as the Democratic
stimulus: it was just a bunch of stuff its supporters already
wanted to do anyway traveling under the name "stimulus." (It also
would involve its fair share of large-scale borrowing in the
absence of spending cuts.) The House Republicans' line about
their alternative
plan creating twice as many jobs for half the money got
caught up in debates about the details. It also never broke
through the president's rhetoric insisting that all his critics
wanted to do nothing about the recession.
But overall, I can't fault the Republicans' approach to the
stimulus too much. Let's get one thing out of the way: they were
never going to have much influence over the final product.
President Obama may have wanted more Republican votes, but the
underlying policy differences were simply too great for him get
them. The Democratic congressional leadership didn't even want
that many Republican votes -- they were content to do only what
little it took to woo enough liberal Republican senators to get
to 60 votes for a stimulus package in the Senate. Once they had
Collins, Specter, and Snowe, there was no more dealmaking.
Nor did the Republicans stand a chance of prevailing
legislatively once their unanimity was broken in the Senate. The
Democrats have the raw numbers and political power. All the
Republicans had was the filibuster and various other points of
order that require 60 votes to waive. Once the Democrats counted
to 60, the bill was going to pass no matter what John Boehner,
Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor or Rush Limbaugh had to say about
it.
No, the
marsh mouse wasn't the biggest thing at stake in a bill that
moves the country toward government-run health care and away from
welfare reform, among other problems. But it seems a better use
of pork-barrel spending -- taking an absurd example to illustrate
the absurdity of an undesirable piece of legislation -- than the
disproportionate crusade against earmarks undertaken by John
McCain.
This is the first time the Republicans have taken a political
risk in opposing a large, misguided spending item since Bill
Clinton was president. (The only arguable exception is the
Republican resistance to SCHIP expansion, though Republican votes
were crucial to the creation of SCHIP itself). Whatever can be
said of their sincerity, their consistency, their timing, or what
kind of buffoonery they'd now be engaged in if McCain were
president, if commentators who thought the stimulus was bad
policy criticize Republicans for voting against it, who is going
to praise them?
A coherent Republican plan for governing isn't going to flow out
of the anti-stimulus campaign anymore than the Contract with
America was the direct product of the Republicans' unanimous
opposition to the Clinton tax increase in 1993. But it's a step
in a better direction than the party has traveled in recent
years.
