Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The Big Stick

Steve Benen
Nevertheless, I have one relevant question: since the House GOP isn't interested in passing the bill anymore, can Democrats make it even better now? The White House has been willing to make all kinds of concessions to win over Republican support, but it's not enough. Since the GOP is going to vote "no" anyway, why not make the bill as effective and progressive as possible? If there's no point in the majority party offering unwelcome enticements to those who'll remain obstinate anyway, then pull the enticements and let the majority party do the right thing.
This is what I was getting at before. We are at the stage of the negotiations where Democrats have typically come back to the table with even more concessions to try to win over Republicans. If Obama has learned anything from the last couple of decades, he should have learned that this is a failed strategy. It's what made the Democrats look weak in their dealings with their counterparts.

The carrot didn't work. Now is the time to bring out the stick. If the Republicans won't cooperate, even when Obama bends over backward to address their concerns, then he should "punish" them for the recalcitrance by making the bill even "worse" (from their perspective) than originally proposed. The Republicans are free to vote against the bill. But they should feel some immediate pain for their choices (as opposed to the deferred pain of an election in two years.)

1 Comments:

Blogger azali said...

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7:57 PM  

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