“It’s a beautiful piece of work.”
That’s Ezra Klein’s assessment of Mitt Romney’s economic recovery platform that the former Massachusetts governor rolled out last week, two days before President Obama addressed Congress on his demand for Stimulus 2.0.
Klein is the Washington Post’s resident smart lefty blogger and an Obama partisan. But he admires production values even as he chides the Romney proposals that would result in higher productivity.
“Put simply, Romney’s plan looks like a general-election plan produced by a large, experienced campaign staff,” Klein notes.
Romney’s 59 points are specific, and those who knocked the plan for its length and detail simply do not grasp either the complexity of the economy or the degree and breadth of the damage done by Obama and his team in just 30 months.
Contrast Romney’s Tuesday rollout with the absurd spectacle of the president urging the Congress Thursday night to pass a bill “right now” which hadn’t been submitted to the House or Senate and indeed which hadn’t been written.
Even Obama acolytes had to cringe at a performance that is as far removed from “presidential” as the Astros are from the World Series. The president’s cheering section in the Manhattan-Beltway media elite seems to have had trouble grasping just how off-putting the president’s contrived stridency was, but as the negative reviews rolled in, the common denominator was ridicule.
From legislators in the chamber to bloggers and pundits spread across the country, the overwhelming reaction was a mixture of amusement and disdain. There are no examples of a Klein-like grudging admiration from across the aisle for the president’s presentation. It was, in a word, awful.
Yes, it was bloody awful, not so much for its content as for its ridiculous anti-climactic timing. Obama should have given this speech or one like it during his first week in office. Then he should have sat on the Congress – he had a Democratic one then – until they passed it. Of course Republican Senators would have filibustered anything they thought might help the country (and thus Obama), but I refuse to believe that the President and Harry Reid acting together couldn’t have made life so miserable for them that they’d give up the tactic. Whatever happened to power politics anyway?
Now we’re in the eleventh hour both economically and in terms of election year politics. Boehner and McConnel know they’re in the home stretch. They need only hold out another ten or twelve months and they can have Obama running for re-election with a limping economy and unemployment still stalled north of 9%. . There’s not a chance in hell they’ll let this thing pass.
@AJ Hill:
Ah yes, dishin’ up more historical revisionism, eh?
The Dims had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate AJ.
There was nothing that the Reps could do to slow down anything that President Downgrade and his minions put their minds to.
Too bad for you that those who comment here are smart enough to remember all the way back to 2009.
@Aye: Gee whiz, Aye, you got me again. But let’s do the numbers just for fun.
As of January, 2009 the tally in the Senate was:
Dem 56
Rep 41
Ind 2
That gives a total of 99, since loser Norm Coleman and the GOP hadn’t yet exhausted their tactics to prevent Al Franken from taking the Senate seat he won. Eventually Franken prevailed, making the count 57:41:2. This still isn’t ” filibuster proof”, especially since one of the Independents was Joe Lieberemann, who could be counted on to vote Republican on just about anything that counts. So, in the best of circumstances, Democrats were just short of a supermajority. Add to that the fact that as many as a dozen nominally Democratic Senators comprised an effective conservative coalition analogous to the “Blue Dogs” in the House. Senators like Baucus, Nelson, Conrad, and Carper were responsible for the failure of numerous Democratic initiatives, especially in healthcare.
So, putting it as kindly as possible, Aye, your contention that the Democrats had a “filibuster-proof majority” in the Senate is just assinine. If they had possessed such an advantage, we’d have a genuine national healthcare program now, instead of the compromised piece of crap that finally made it through.
@AJ Hill:
Obviously your Civics 101 knowledge is lacking because you’ve ignored the simple fact that, while there were indeed two Independents in the Senate, both of them caucused with the Dims giving them a total of 59.
Once Franken was sworn in, the total in their caucus rose to 60 which was..say it with me…. Filibuster. Proof.
So, putting it as kindly as possible, you’re full o’ shit once again.
Pardon me, but the numbers game played is like counting the apples you have today as the same number you used for the pie you made last week.
Tho O’healthcare was not enacted until after the Reconciliation Act in March 2010, the chamber votes for the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was in Dec 2009. So in order to discuss majorities, as it relates to the referenced national healthcare program mentioned above, you’d have to look at the party make up of Congress in late 2009.
At that time there were 58 Democrats, two independents (one being a certain person’s favorite socialist, Bernie Sanders), and 40 Republicans. The 56 number thrown out here did not accommodate for a few changes between April and Sept 2009. The 58th official Dem seat was regained, in time for the O’healthcare vote, when the MA governor bent the rules to get Paul G. Kirk Jr. sworn in, replacing Kennedy, in time to cast a Dem vote of [hell] yeah.
Mata Musing ADDED: All this has to do with Franken getting in, Specter swapping an R for a D by April, and Kennedy’s fast track replacement later in the year, and in time for the O’healthcare vote
With 58, plus one guaranteed socialist support for Dem party agendas, that’s 59 who were pretty much going to be predictable. Lieberman is not conservative on social issues… just foreign policy, national security and defense. So that’s a strawman,and Lieberman becomes the 60th in this arena.
As was quite predictable, all 58 Dems, the socialist and Indy Lieberman voted in favor of O’healthcare giving them a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. All GOP voted nay save KY’s Jim Bunning, who used family commitments to dodge the vote.
The House did not have a super-majority, with the Dems holding 257 seats. That, however, was not the reason that O’healthcare was not a single payer national healthcare system. Instead, it was because too many of the Dem blue dogs were also opposed to such extreme leftist approach to healthcare. The last minute compromises were not catering to GOP opposition, but to internal Dem opposition.
Therefore there was nothing that an impotent GOP could do to stop it. Not that they tried… 174 GOP refused to sign on to O’healthcare with a yes vote. 34 did… a vote they still have a hard time living down today, despite their showboating of a repeal attempt in Jan 2011.
The Washington Examiner article said:
Well, Obama has gone from ”pass this bill now,” to, ”I’ll take a piece at a time PLEASE.”
http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0911/take_what_you_can_get_792d7e04-3f0f-4501-b679-ef31f61716c4.html
Boy!
I bet he will!
Looking that monster over made me realize Obama wants Republicans to throw their TEA Party promises under the bus.
It sure would make him look good!
OTOH, Axelrod said:
So, I guess Obama will take whatever he can get.
@Aye: It might have helped, if you had even made it to Civics 101. A “filibuster proof” majority exists in the Senate only if one can rely on every nominally Demcratic Senator to vote that way and for much of the summer of 2009 there was no such assurance for the healthcare bill. Conservative Democratic Senators like Max Baucus raised repeated objections to provisions in the bill These difficulties were widely reported in the press, so it’s hard to believe that you’re unaware of them. For example:
Or you could try this article from the New York Times.
I think that, as usual, you’re just running a bluff to avoid having to admit you’re wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time; but in this case you’re arguing about a trivial choice of wording, which seems silly even for you. Call it whatever you like. I’m done with it.
@AJ Hill:
You know, it’s really amusing to watch you attempt to reframe the debate, move the goalposts, redefine historically accepted terminology, and argue with yourself in order to try and salvage your arguments.
In comment #1, you started off by saying:
Once I pointed out to you that the Dims had enough votes to stop a filibuster, you shifted the focus of your argument. No longer did you want to argue the total number of Senators caucusing with the Dim side.
Suddenly, instead of continuing to try and blame imagined Rep obstructionism, you wanted to shift to blaming Senators on the Dim side for what you perceive to be legislative failures.
Argue with yourself much?
As a side note, all of the Dim Senators you point your gnarled finger at voted “Yea” on the health care bill you’ve got your panties in a twist over.
Then, in one last ditch, desperate attempt, you choose to attempt to redefine the term “filibuster proof”.
Reid’s inability to circle his wagons around an objective does not a redefinition make.
Desperate.
My original point stands:
You know, it’s funny to watch you engage in projection like that.
Reframing? Check.
Moving goalposts? Check.
Redefining terms? Check.
Seems you’re the one attempting to run a bluff.
More intelligent, better educated, and wiser men (and women) than you have attempted to prove me wrong. They, like you, have all failed miserably.
Keep hope alive though. You might (or might not) get lucky.
Hilarious!
As I said, genius, I’m done with this interchange. You evidently don’t even know how many Senators are required for a filibuster! What a waste of space!
@Aye:
Hey, Aye?
I think AJ’s got a future…..with Obama’s AttackWatch.com.
@AJ Hill:
Sigh. Of course I know how many Senators are required for a filibuster. I know how many votes are required to overcome a filibuster (cloture) as well.
It’s a shame you’re running away from our debate. You were doing such a fine job of demonstrating that you are educated beyond your intelligence.