| Anyone who watched the Republican strategy over the recent Congressional stimulus package had to be scratching their head. I mean...marching in lock-step in opposition to a spending plan intended to create jobs and build infrastructure...while millions were losing their jobs? What was weirder still was that the media thought, well, that the GOP was back, baby!
Sunday Frank Rich wrote a much more erudite column on this topic than I could muster. In short, Rich noted that the cable tv and talk radio doom-and-gloom talk about Obama, Congressional Democrats, and the stimulus plan and the subsequent suberserviance to the punditocracy to that message was the result of the DC-insider "echo chamber." But here, on the other side of a passed bill, and a quick look at some polls, show that -- by golly! -- people liked the stimulus bill, Democrats, and Obama! And...well...generally despise Congressional Republcians.
Rich:
Overdosing on [DC insider] culture can be fatal. Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the "inevitable" Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn't recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week's. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.
Kos' Research 2000 poll shows that Congressional Dems gained three points during the stimulus debates, and Congressional Republicans dropped ten points to a 39-percent approval rating. And lest you think Research 2000 is biased, Gallup showed the Republican Congress critturs with a 31-percent approval rating.
So...why would, say, Dennis Rehberg shout from the rooftops his opposition to the stimulus package? Sure, there are some legitimate concerns with the bill...but then Rehberg's opposition seemed purely political. Or did the constituent calls lend him courage? Is Montana against the stimulus package by a 10-to-1 margin, or are the calls from the Representative's base, the folks whose stance on the stimulus was already created by the Rush Limbaughs and Dave Bergs of the world?
What's a politico to do? Do you believe the calls...or the polls? |
