What's been most interesting to me today is not that a majority coalition made up of progressives AND conservatives managed to defeat the bailout bill, although that is pretty interesting, but rather how partisan and political Republicans have been on the issue after the bill went down. With all the talk of coming together to solve a crisis (one that Americans are not convinced exists, or at least they're not convinced it affects them) Republicans have gone full bore hurling accusations for the failure of the bill at Democrats, which is clearly just them tprojecting. As Josh Marshall notes, the idea that this is a Democratic failure -- whether you're sad or glad the bill went down -- is patently absurd:
There's a lot of talk out there from commentators who you'd think would know better claiming that this was basically a bipartisan failure -- that both parties, Republicans and Democrats, failed to carry their members for this bill.But look at the numbers. 60% of Democrats in the House voted for this bill. 33% of Republicans. Face it, that's not even close.
But it's not stopping them from trying to gain some political advantage. Since the failure of the bill, we've seen Republican House leadership accuse the bill's failure on a speech Nancy Pelosi gave, which Barney Frank hilariously mocked as their having "hurt feelings." This accusation was echoed by the John McCain campaign, which released a statement from economic advisor Douglas Holz-Eakin:
"From the minute John McCain suspended his campaign and arrived in Washington to address this crisis, he was attacked by the Democratic leadership: Senators [Barack] Obama and [Harry] Reid, Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and others. Their partisan attacks were an effort to gain political advantage during a national economic crisis. By doing so, they put at risk the homes, livelihoods and savings of millions of American families," Holtz-Eakin said in his statement. He also blamed Pelosi for delivering a "strongly worded partisan speech" before the vote was called.
Except, remember what John McCain's campaign claimed he was bringing to the table by going to Washington to "solve the crisis"?
On Sunday, one of McCain's top advisers, Steve Schmidt, was giving him credit for making the deal happen. "What Sen. McCain was able to do was to help bring all of the parties to the table, including the House Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass this," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
And his results speak for themselves.
Over the weekend, McCain spoke with several House Republicans and in the end, four of them voted against the bailout: Reps. Marsha Blackburn, Mario Diaz-Balart and two fellow Arizonans: Reps. John Shadegg and Jeff Flake.
Great work, John!
What else does McCain have but to deflect attention away from what is clearly his own failure to follow through on what he foolishly promised last week? But really, the very idea that John McCain would swoop into Washington and bring House Republicans on board with anything was always an absurd notion. They don't like him and they don't trust him. What this whole episode proves to the nation in clear and stark terms is just how impotent a force in Washington McCain actually is and actually what an impotent president he would be.
Update [2008-9-29 18:7:42 by Todd Beeton]:Hilarious. Now McCain's line is "this is not the time to affix blame" but that's precisely what he's doing.
In Des Moines, Iowa, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the following: "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to affix the blame. It’s time to fix the problem. "
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