re: #275 webevintage

From the Ezra Klein post that Charles linked too:
“And still, it looks like Democrats might lose the vote today. And when I say “lose the vote,” I don’t mean that a majority of the Senate will vote against it. I mean that 58 senators, rather than 60, will support the legislation. All Republicans, and possibly Ben Nelson, appear to remain opposed. And why not? The less that Democrats appear to be doing on jobs — and the fewer jobs that Democrats actually create — the better Republicans will do in November. Substantial compromises on the bill haven’t brought any new votes, and that’s in part because Republicans see no political upside in passing the legislation.”

So in the end the R’s really don’t give a shit.
If the bill does not pass they can blame it on the D’s even though they got compromise after compromise and still said “no”. We suck as a country if there is no political downside to voting against help for the unemployed in this economy.

The GOP has so tainted the well that it works out for a win-win for them, regardless of what it does to the electorate.

- If the bill passes, they can hold it up as an example of more “unnecessary” deficit-spending, as a sign that the Democrats are spending us deeper into the hole to fund their welfare state, and that it’s only going to make the recession worse.

- If it fails, then the subsequent loss of benefits and shockwaves that go down the economic chain, leading to further job losses, businesses going under, foreclosures, and so forth will be milked as “proof” that the recovery isn’t over, or that the bill failed because it had “unnecessary” spending tacked on, or that we’d be able to pay for it if we’d taken money from elsewhere.

This truly makes no fucking sense, that a political party could profit off making the nation worse.