They shouldn’t vote No. They should vote present — the favorite tactic of our new President.

(Yeah, I know: US Senators don’t have that option. But imagine the uproar if the Repubs demanded a voice vote and, one after the other, voted Present.)

This is Ronald Reagan: Set down the opinion poll and slowly back away…

The MSM won’t give them credit, but that doesn’t mean Republicans won’t get it from the voters. If the Republicans stand on principle (wow, did I just type those words?) and the stimulus fails (death … taxes … the failure of Keynesian stimulus), they will have a nuclear powered sledgehammer of a talking point … and the Democrats will bear full brunt for the failure.

Voters believed that high oil prices over the past few years were due to price gauging by US oil companies. Where did they get that idea?

Voters believe the current economic crisis is the result of Republican deregulation. Where did they get that idea?

Voters believe that something in Lil’ Lord Obama’s past qualifies him to be President. Where did they get that idea?

If this stimulus package passes without GOP support and fails, the Democrat’s Ministry of Disinformation — i.e. the MSM — will do what they always do: they go into overdrive blaming the GOP by saying that not enough was spent. They will screech about the GOP only wanting tax cuts for “their fatcat, corporate buddies” and other such nonsense. They will have Leftist economists hacks sitting on panels with other Leftist economist hacks and Leftist politicians decrying the GOPs “obstructionism” and “anti-American selfishness”. And they will relentlessly hammer the American public with that meme from now until the next election.

And the brain-dead American public will buy it. They will buy it because they’ve fully bought into the lie that govt is the answer to everything and that where there’s a failure of govt, the GOP is behind it.

The American public are not going to be cured of the Leftist rot that they’re infested with until real hardship hits – in the form of an attack somewhere that kills tens of thousands of people or in the form of another economic meltdown on the level of the Great Depression. And by letting the morally confused, ideologically blinded Left take control of our culture, one or both is an absolute certainty eventually.

Like I said a few days ago, if the economy’s recovering by the time of the midterms — for whatever reason — the Democrats and the media will claim we owe it all to the stimulus. A party-line no vote is a bet that things will still be getting worse, not better, by November 2010.

This is so wrong it’s laughable. Keep it simple: DISASSOCIATE FROM OBAMANOMICS COMPLETELY AND CONDEMN THE LEFT AS DECEITFUL RAIDERS OF THE TREASURY.

YOu just FIGURED this out NOW??

What about the responsibility to oppose
and demand accountability of
Fanny and freddie
Wall street
Crooked ceos jumping off the ship as they hit the iceberg

Oh so now ONLY after you had your asses handed to you
do you decide to maybe take a stand..

Ok you so called conservative morons..
If and i repeat IF you even manage to actualy hold your stance against obama and all the dems
and NOT one of you caves in to the obama insanity

maybe in 2 years you might get your jobs back
You have a long very long 2 year fight against you..

Because right now most americans are so fed up with all of you
We are about ready to march on washington dc..
And execute justice..

People are pissed off
SO you best begin to prove it.

Don’t stop wwith removing the contraceptivwe money. We need debate on all of this.

Is it me or does nobody understand the urgency of the problem? The Republicans would rather have us do nothing as if that is better than doing something.

Obviously you don’t understand that doing nothing would be better than passing this crap stimulus bill.

Republicans would have it that this spending bill was suprisingly brought before them, when in fact it had been the works for several months. To only protest now, a day before the bill will be voted on is clearly purposefull in intent because they know the bill will pass, and the economy’s sure-fire failure in the coming months won’t be their fault because they voted no. Notwithstanding all that, every expert agrees stimulus or not, the economy will tank sooner rather than later and Republicans are taking advantage of that.

Furthermore the CBO estimates that 66% of the Stimulus will be dolled out in the first 18 months. The money as the CBO estimate states would go to Federal Gov’t agencies where it would then be dolled out to private companies to do work for the Fed. Gov’t or be done by the Gov’t itself if that agency posses the requisite expertise. No where in the CBO estimate does it say the money will be going to private companies owned by liberal activists as you have so noted. Maybe you should stop misleading the public and actually go after specific portions of the bill instead of labeling the whole thing one big Democratic campaign donation.

Finally, today Republicans complain about spending close to 1 trillion dollars to help America where for the last 8 years none complained about the billions if not trillions of dollars we spent defending America or attacking Iraq (sometimes they’re not one in the same). If Republicans would have been paying attention to domestic affairs for the last 8 years no one would have to be spending $825 billion today.

Like I said a few days ago, if the economy’s recovering by the time of the midterms — for whatever reason

You can’t be serious…

3) The GOP votes against the stimulus and it fails.

Again, we’re not going to get any credit. The MSM is going to paint the failure as the fault of the GOP. And guess what? It’s going to work to a large degree…for now. But again, “now” isn’t what really matters. The long term health of the nation is what matters.

The MSM won’t give them credit, but that doesn’t mean Republicans won’t get it from the voters. If the Republicans stand on principle (wow, did I just type those words?) and the stimulus fails (death … taxes … the failure of Keynesian stimulus), they will have a nuclear powered sledgehammer of a talking point … and the Democrats will bear full brunt for the failure.

Republicans had far fewer outlets to get their message out in 1980 and 1994, yet the electorate still held the Democrats responsible for their frak-ups. What’s left of the MSM now won’t be able to change that.

But politics is a fact of life. If the economy starts to recover, the Dems will bludgeon the GOP with talking points about how they opposed the stimulus that saved the universe and there’ll be consequences for that at the polls. It must be nice to live in fantasyland where everyone always votes on principle and pays no price for it whatsoever.

One other thought about this – IF the economy recovers in the wake of this stimulus (not necessarily because of), the Democrats are going to get credit ANYWAY, regardless of how many Republican votes they get. They can get 0, or they can get every Republican in congress, and either way, they will get credit because they have the majority.

Don’t believe me? See the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It got more Republican votes than Democratic votes, both in percentage terms and absolute term … and who got credit again? (Hint: there will be no need to play “name that party”).

Republicans have nothing to lose by voting on principle this time. They should do it. And if they can’t do it now, when can they do it?

Say what you will about Boehner supporting the first TARP, but there is the theory out there that it DID save the economy from catastrophic collapse…I know we’ll never know for sure, but the economy was like a car running out of oil (not gas) and if we hadn’t poured the TARP out there, the engine would have locked up and we would have been in a bigger world of hurt. The banks screwed us because the genuises that put the plan together didn’t give us the promised transparency, but it provided enough oil to keep the car from blowing up. Anyway, disagree with me if you will, there’s lot of controversy over that point, I know.

Bottom line: I believe Boehner did the right thing on that vote, and that he is doing the right thing voting NO on the stimulus scam-the-us. We should be thanking our lucky freaking stars we have Boehner up there. We need 50 more like him.

Term limits.
Term limits.
Term limits.

Oh yeah, and I want to see real conservatives hold the line once and for all.

But politics is a fact of life. If the economy starts to recover, the Dems will bludgeon the GOP with talking points about how they opposed the stimulus that saved the universe and there’ll be consequences for that at the polls. It must be nice to live in fantasyland where everyone always votes on principle and pays no price for it whatsoever.

Sorry, Allah, but this argument is absolute bunk, and it serves as a perfect example of why conservatives/libertarians/Republicans are steadily losing ground politically and culturally. You and those like you still operate under the delusion that the GOP can somehow nimbly navigate its way through a culture whose institutions and information streams have been completely co-opted by Leftists who absolutely hate our guts…that we can somehow make these Faustian bargains with the Left and expect that we’re going to get some sort of credit for it.

Quick quiz: name one conservative, non-RINO Republican in the past 30 years whom you believe has received a minimally fair shake in the US news media — one who hasn’t been portrayed as an out-of-touch old codger, religious nut, bigot, or doofus. Just one.

Nuff said.

Let’s look at the four possible outcomes of GOP votes on this “stimulus” package.

1) The GOP votes for the stimulus and it succeeds.

Remember: the GOP’s primary raison d’être is less govt, less spending. What does a vote for this bill say? It says that the GOP is making a transparent calculation for votes at the expense of abandoning everything that it’s supposed to stand for. It also says “Hey, big govt works!” So if that’s the case, why not just continue to vote for Dems? At least they actually believe in what they’re doing. What’s the GOP’s excuse?

2) The GOP votes for the stimulus and it fails.

In that case, the public will rightly judge the GOP as a party that is bankrupt of principle. “Well, we didn’t really believe in this stimulus package, but we didn’t want to risk losing any more seats.” What a great campaign slogan! The public still knows that the vote was motivated more by a fear of Congressional losses than by any real desire to staunch the bleeding through govt intervention. So again: why vote for the imitation (GOP) when you can get the real deal (Dems) for the same price?

3) The GOP votes against the stimulus and it succeeds.

You’re absolutely right that this is going to hurt the GOP’s chances in 2010. But it’s mainly going to hurt their chances amongst people that already believe — to one degree or another — in big govt in the first place. Blacks are not going to vote for the GOP under any circumstances. Hispanics — contrary to popular opinion — vote for Democrats: in this last election, they simply reverted back to what they’d always done prior to 2006, giving Obama the same vote percentage as they gave Gore in 2000. And white Democrats aren’t going to start abandoning the Democratic party en masse until about 2020, when they look around them and no longer recognize — in any way, shape, or form — the country in which they live. But at least the GOP will be able to say that it stood by it’s principles. And the benefit of doing so doesn’t come overnight…it comes years down the road.

We all know that all of this out-of-control govt spending — coupled with the looming time bombs of Soc. Sec. and Medicaid/Medicare — is going to result in a fiscal disaster down the road. But unfortunately, 10% of the American public are Leftist true believers and 80% still get ALL of their information from institutions that are utterly dominated by the Left. But eventually, reality will intrude. When that happens, what position do you want to see the GOP in? As a principled party that has been warning about this coming disaster for over a decade, steadfastly refusing to feed the deficit beast that will destroy us? Or as a party of unprincipled cowards who were more interested in Congressional seats than they were in doing what they knew was right for the country?

3) The GOP votes against the stimulus and it fails.

Again, we’re not going to get any credit. The MSM is going to paint the failure as the fault of the GOP. And guess what? It’s going to work to a large degree…for now. But again, “now” isn’t what really matters. The long term health of the nation is what matters.

So you see, none of these scenarios is really going to give a big boost to the GOP. But this principled stand — coupled with another one here and another one there — will help to swing those centrist voters who went for Obama back to our side. Also, it begins to lay the foundation for a HUGE resurgence over the next two decades, as 1) we continue to build our media capabilities for bypassing the MSM to inform the American public and 2) the Left’s propaganda machine is unable to hide and blame-away the undeniable reality of the cultural and economic devastation their policies will have caused.

Vladimir Lenin said, “To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities; that is not to be taken seriously in politics.” We all know the end result of that kind of thinking. Is that where you would have us go?

Sheesh.

thirteen28 on January 27, 2009 at 3:34 PM

Second that.

If the GOP wants to keep their noses clean for 2010 and 2012 they will oppose this atrocity with their dying breaths and be able to point to the way they responded to the dotcom collapse, 9/11 and all the corporate accounting scandals.

They cut taxes on corporations and the investing class. Ain’t politically popular, but damned if it doesnt work and it’s a hell of alot cheaper than this will be.

This kind of fiscal backbone would have been nice to have had for the past few years. Might have saved us going into the 2006 elections.

t.ferg on January 27, 2009 at 3:05 PM

Opposing the bailout before the election (which unfortunately many conservatives worried about their 401Ks supported) might have also saved us from some of the loses in 2008. That bailout, as predicted, opened the doors for this free-for-all which we will see non-stop for years to come.

Even if this was a real stimulus package instead of a pork sandwich, the government can only delay reality before its policies cause an even greater downturn in the future.

The Fed is banking on the idea that the saving nations holding our debt will continue to think that the US is too big to fail. If it keeps up it interventionist policies, I am afraid the Fed will find out just how mistaken it is.