Dissent is — well, not unpatriotic, exactly, just staggeringly irresponsible. Reminds me of Trent Lott trying to rally the pro-amnesty troops two years ago by arguing that it would be downright cowardly not to cram that turd of a bill down America’s throat. Comedy gold, in case you’ve never seen the clip.

Note that The One makes a point here of repeating his attack on Wall Street bonuses as “shameful.” That’s no accident — see my post on McCaskill’s new bill from last night for an explanation — just as it’s no accident that Treasury’s going to weigh in on the subject next week. The porkier and less popular the stimulus gets, the more the Democrats have to atone with populist gestures. As for the upcoming Senate vote, I’m guessing there’s no chance of a GOP filibuster — not only because Judd Gregg’s about to get vacuumed up into the cabinet, taking the GOP’s filibuster power with him, but because the party would be taking a huge political risk in blocking the trillion dollars that are going to Save The Universe. America wanted Democratic rule and now they’ve got what they bargained for. Let them have it. Mission accomplished, says Christopher Caldwell:

The stimulus will be expensive, more expensive than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined and Nancy Pelosi, Senate majority leader, has called it a mere “down payment”. The stimulus bill, whether it succeeds or fails, could be the Democrats’ Iraq. Like Iraq, it is a long-standing partisan project that is being marketed as an ad hoc response to a national emergency. It reflects the pre-existing wishes of the party’s most powerful interest groups more than the pre-existing wishes of the country. Democrats are now liable to be judged by the standard they created when they abandoned the Bush administration over the Iraq war: you break it, you own it.

Update: Bipartisanship’s overrated anyway, says the man of Steele.