W00t.
The conventional wisdom was that if the Dems did get Health Care Reform through, that would be it. The solid phalanx of No would clamp down even harder. But it’s not looking that way. Sen. Dodd (D-CT) says that post-Health Care a number of his Republican colleagues have had enough.
“The health care thing kind of changed the atmospherics around here,” Dodd told reporters today. “I think, frankly, there are a number of Republicans who went along with the strategy of ‘just say no’ who were never really happy with it, but if it worked they would go along. They saw it fail. And now they’ve had enough of it. and they really want to be involved in crafting things.”
On the plus side, having Snowe ready to cooperate will make it possible to pass laws again. On the minus side every law will read a little bit more like something that Olympia Snowe wrote.
Naturally teabaggers will go absolutely frothing apeshit every time Scott Brown or Lindsey Graham or a Mainer joins with Democrats to pass something, and that is pretty awesome. Their tears of futile rage will never get old.
Jim C.
One of these days someone is going to have to explain to me how Lindsey Graham gets his undeserved reputation as a moderate who is willing to come to the table with ideas and sign on to actually participating in the process of governing.
He’s just a younger version of how McCain is today.
MTiffany
I’m thinking that if the Democrats kept it up, and pressed forward to pass legislation that Obama campaigned on, they might actually have a chance to pick up seats come November. Of course, that’s never been done before, but neither has Democrats sticking to their guns and not cowering in fear of Republican opposition and smears. Who knows? It might be worth a try.
@Jim C.: Graham is a moderate because he is a giant closet-case class-A self-loathing poofter.
Tenzil Kem
Y’know, Snowe kept saying last December that things were moving too fast and the vote should be pushed back a few months. It’s a few months later now, so presumably she’ll vote yes for the reconciliation bill, right? Right?
Stroszek
Either that or Snowe sees another opportunity to revive her infinite prick tease. The bottom line is that, genuinely cooperative or not, Reid needs to make it clear that he’s going to set a deadline and he’s going to make Republicans vote in defense of Wall Street until a bill goes through.
Napoleon
Dodd is just a sucker. Either they will pull the ball away just like on Baucus or they will get something so water down that it is useless (likely both). Dodd just does not get it and is just as bad in his own way as Nelson or Baucus.
mr. whipple
I wouldn’t be so sure she and others are really willing to cooperate to any great degree. Might just be more of the same: demand their ideas, but no votes for the bills.
Since the teabaggers are whipped into a froth, I don’t count on many GOP persuadables.
Violet
Interesting that Dodd said that, since he’s the one with the financial reform bill. Perhaps a little self-interest involved?
Jamey
Repubs looking for an excuse to back away slowly from their batshit supporters?
Looks like the ship is abandoning the sinking rats. Whoodathunkit?
Hugh
Until one of them kills someone.
Terry
I believe that some Republicans *do* now wish to work on legislation. But the evidence of this past year is that the Republican leadership will lean on them and they will fall in line with the obstructionism. Corker made angry noises about the leadership blocking his efforts on financial reform but he is just venting, not defying them.
dr. bloor
Too bad. I was rather looking forward to them staying the hell out of the way on future legislation as well.
some guy
They have been involved in crafting things. The stimulus bill, the credit card reform legislation, and the health care bill all contained amendments drafted by Republicans. They then turn around and vote against the bill they helped craft on the grounds that it’s still “too liberal.”
It would be nice if either: 1) Democrats said enough is enough and just voted as a bloc to reject all GOP amendments until they start translating into actual votes, or 2) the Democrats would get some fscking credit from the media for at least trying to be bipartisan.
As it stands, the Dems gain neither votes nor good press for letting Republicans water down their bills. Yet people like Dodd still want to let them do it.
Bubblegum Tate
Standing up for yourself and getting results is a good thing, isn’t it, Democrats? Let’s hope this lesson sticks with you.
Also, both a return to sanity by at least some of the GOP and the accompanying increase in crazification of teabaggers would be filed under the category of Good Things.
jrg
Whatever. Co-operating with Nigerian Muslim Communist white-baby-eaters is not the way to win a Republican primary fight.
cmorenc
This will work until the hard-right “NEVER!” irredentist crazies focus laser-beam pressure on any apostates, threatening well-financed primary challengers. Think what’s happened to Charlie Crist in Florida (who would be an EASY winner in November running as an independent, or even perhaps switching to a dem) who has moved from favored to hopelessly down in a primary race against a rabid wingnut.
One benefit if the dems do manage to hold onto their Senate majority by a lessened, but still significant margin (at least 4-5 seats) in 2010 is that at some point, Olympia Snowe may likely have an Arlen Specter coming-to-Jesus moment when she realizes that she didn’t leave the GOP, it left her standing out in the cold, and she no longer has a habitable home there – the only viable option for her to stay in the Senate is to switch parties.
Pangloss
When you’re advocating Kristallnacht against Democratic legislators, calling congressmen the N-word, spitting on legislators, making death threats, cutting gas lines, and sending faxes of a noose to an African-American congressman, how can you walk it back? More frighteningly, how do you take it up a notch?
J.W. Hamner
The only way we’re going to get anything done is if some Republicans cross over… so I hope it’s true… I mean reconciliation is off the table until our next budget in the fall, right?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Jamey:
FTW.
Reform has a momentum of its own – once we see a major problem and start fixing it, it is hard to stop halfway. I predict that major fixes (not the minors ones the Senate is working on now) to HCR will move it further in the direction of public option within 3 years, i.e. in the wake of the 2012 elections. I’ve said before on many occasions that the best analog to HCR today is railroad rate regulation 107 years ago (the Elkins Act followed by the Hepburn Act three years later), and I’m sticking with that analogy.
mr. whipple
There was also a report that Kerry is working some GOP senators hard on climate change, and some cause for optimism they’ll get on baord.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Rick Taylor
This time the Democrats are going to kick that football to the moon!
Zifnab
I’m going with the skeptics on this. I’ll believe bipartisan when I see it. Until you’ve got Graham and the Maine Twins and a few other “moderates” actually voting on something, it’s all just talk. The health care bill is perfect case in point. Just yesterday Coburn was trying to pass the “No hugs for serial killers” amendment entirely to slow the bill down and the GOoPers didn’t blink twice. There’s no reconciliation here until I see the votes.
This looks like Lucy with the football to me. But I’m not a balding eight-year-old in a striped shirt, so what do I know?
cleek
that whooshing sound you just heard was the wind created when 15 GOP Senators frantically started shaking their heads while shouting “No, that wasn’t me! I don’t know who Dodd is talking about! Don’t beat me, Mr Teabag!”
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Jim C.:
Without the trophy wife, glibbering idiot daughter and heterosexual feelings.
Lab Partner
“And now they’ve had enough of it. and they really want to be involved in crafting things”
Really? Really? Gosh, now that I think about it, maybe that doesn’t sound like the dumbest f***in’ thing I’ve heard all year! Let’s forget everything that’s happened over the last 14 months and hold hands and pick daisies and eat berries and chase bunnies with Republicans!! Yay! What could go wrong with this plan!!
Royston Vasey
” tears of futile rage”
Full of Win. =)
(PS – Blockquote fail)
tyrese
The total opposition was a dumb scheme. The 41 republican senators like having power, and if they continue the total oppo they lose all their power. So I view this as a really good sign and expect at least a half-dozen of the more moderate republicans to sign on now to the billmaking process.
Bill E Pilgrim
That was well-said.
On the other hand, the health care bill already looks like something that Mitt Romney wrote, as many have pointed out, it’s essentially a pretty conservative bill, more in line with what Republicans proposed in years past than with some radical so schlitz turning of the dial to 11 as the screamers claim.
It’s inevitable that some of the more moderates would start defecting, the lockstep only works precisely to the point that it fails. The crazies won’t stop of course, god love em. I hope they split the party into three for November.
SpotWeld
So the GOP was told that if they all stayed the course and did everything they could to stop healt care reform, they would have an immediate victory and they would be greated as liberators?
… seriously there’s a quote about not learning from history that applies here, right?
PaulW
Dodd may claim it but I’ll believe it when I see it. I don’t see it so far.
EconWatcher
Is this Dodd’s way of pushing back against Obama’s suggestion for the Dems in Congress to hang tough on an aggressive bill? Sounds like the beginnings of an excuse to water down in search of bipartisanship. I don’t trust Dodd much.
PhoenixRising
Yeah, the GOP in 1990 had a tripod of support: Jeebus for President, Hands Off My Money, and Kill Some ________s Over There.
Now they have three sticks and a pile of kindling to stand on.
Keep up the good work, Democrats! Outlasting the insane and the inane is a sort of victory.
Dee Loralei
Benen has an article up about how Graham is emulating BFF McCain and taking his ball and going home. Yea, even probably on climate change.
Dodd’s just wishful thinking here.
Dollared
@jrg
Fixed.
Camchuck
Whatever, its a con. Republicans have been kicked in the nuts and are in a defensive crouch, while the Democrats are hovering over them with a big old club (financial reform). And so they start crying “Wait, lets work together.”
So the Dems will put down the club and we’ll get some lovely Goldman-Sachs stroking bipartisanship. We’ll end up with a toothless financial bill so the Dems can trade in their championship mojo for some Broder love. And the Republicans get to regroup and rebrand just in time for the midterms.
Wake up Dems. You drank the Republican milkshake on HCR. Now smack them with the bowling pin. Alas, Goldman-stamped financial “reform” is what Dodd & Co. want.
Dollared
Uh-oh, wasn’t the “tidal wave follows the first success” Rahm’s theory?
Was he right?
Although he’s still a sellout and a corporatist toady, was he right?
The Populist
@MTiffany:
Ding Ding Ding…winner. What the right don’t get is pretty simple. Go ahead and play overgrown child, take your toys home and avoid doing your elected duties.
The public will tire of it rather quickly.
Maude
If some repubs start to get involved in legislation, the party will splinter.
They can’t continue with opposition forever.
It is starting to backfire on them.
A major problem is that the repubs are seen as associated with the teabaggers and the outbreak of violence.
It will be interesting to watch.
Robin G
@Napoleon:
This. I honestly can’t believe Dodd is buying this crap again. Maybe it’s because he believes his neighboring senators, the “nice” ones, aren’t as party-loyal and cold-blooded as the others. They are. They just keep their hands clean.
The Populist
@Camchuck:
I dunno this time. I sense they see no matter what they do, the GOP will fight them. I am seeing more ballsy behavior than usual from dems and it’s encouraging.
The Populist
@Robin G:
Old school senators from the left truly believe they can act all gentlemanly and get the opposition to come to the table. I don’t think that’s going to change.
ericblair
Oh, look, Lucy’s back with the football.
If Republicans actually do come to the table, any meeting should start by pointing out that We Don’t Actually Need You You Know and start extracting flesh from there. If they’re coming to the table, they need the Dems for something and the price for that should have just gone through the roof.
Stooleo
Bob Corker is the one showing a glimmer of sanity. Of course he’ll pay for it politically for not passing the purity test.
Robin G
@The Populist: The thing is, politicians — almost all of them — really are very charming and congenial in person. They don’t get anywhere in politics unless they are. I’m sure Snowe and Collins are looking at Dodd with big puppy eyes, assuring him that they’re the best of buds, and this time they really have had it with the GOP, and now they’re all going to work together. And Dodd falls for it every time.
Supposedly, Bill O’Reilly is very nice to his guests before they go on the air. So nice that some of them actually believe he isn’t going to call them socialist tyrants when he gets them on camera.
JD Rhoades
Or some Republicans are beginning to realize the bitch-slapping they’re going to be getting if they don’t shape up and start working constructively with the MAJORITY.
Senator Burr, apparently, did not get the memo.
Jamey
ABQ
Thanks. I plan on using that phrase as the theme for my sermon on Psalm Punday…
Seanly
Win. That should be up in BJ’s banner rotation.
Jeff Fecke
@tyrese:
This. Look, Olympia Snowe is just as enraging to Republicans as, say, Ben Nelson is to us. She’s more than happy to sell out her party when the benefits outweigh the consequences, and all signs were that she really, really wanted to be the 60th vote to push health care past cloture, but that her leadership leaned on her so hard she couldn’t.
Well, her leadership just failed to get health care reform blocked, and Snowe has to be thinking to herself that now she can get all sorts of goodies for being vote 60 again. And I have no doubt she and the few Republicans who are possible wheeler-dealers are licking their chops at the prospect.
Camchuck
@The Populist:
I agree with you in regards to just about every issue except financial reform.
Teabaggers, progressives and everyone in between want to see the banks smacked. But the banks own too many Senators on both sides of the aisle (especially Dodd and Shelby who are crafting the damn bill). There’s mutual incentive to create a bill that placates the bases and puts to bed the unpopular history of the financial crisis, but at the same time doesn’t punish the banks/fix much at all. And if that’s your objective, you get it done by creating a nice bi-partisan narrative that will dominate the media coverage. Its not like CNN will focus on the complex intricacies of bank legislation and report on whether it will be effective or not. Stories of Dodd and Shelby holding hands is what the viewers want, right?
Then when DADT, Climate change, EFCA… etc come around, it’ll be right back to the Republican NO-fest.
This is a better deal for Republicans than for Dems. And its a big shit sandwich for all of us.
Martin
@Terry: This is my sentiment as well. It’s harder for Republicans to stand independent of the party because it’s so much more centralized over there. If the RNC is pissed at you, you’re fucked – go ask Bunning about that. The only thing resembling grass-roots are the teabaggers and the fundies, so you really can’t win this one.
And it’s not going to be just a few Republicans breaking ranks – because it’s too easy to punish a handful of them (unless they are retiring). It’s going to take a coalition of Republicans to form and break ranks – enough that they can support each other. But with only 41 of them in the Senate 1/3 up for re-election, and everyone in the House up this year, I don’t see it happening until either right before the election or right after.
evinfuilt
@dr. bloor:
Pretty much the only thing worst than Government passing legislation, is bi-partisan supported legislation.
I’ll take dem only bills please. pretty please.
jibeaux
I’d take Snowe over Lieberman any day of the week and twice on Sunday, but I’ll believe it when I see it. What I would like to see is the left-leaning voters of Maine finally demanding that their twofer Senators start aligning themselves a bit more with their constituents’ views. The combination of shiny goodies & happier voters should be fairly potent.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Jeff Fecke:
Snow is in a fairly unique position though, because of the strength of her personal “brand” in her state and the high risk that the Dems could take that seat if she is primaried from the right by teabaggers. The national GOP needs her more than she needs them. Not too many other Senators are in that kind of position of strength with respect to the national party and the conservative movement, which means that the number of potential negotiators on the GOP side is very low – probably no more than 2 or 3 at most.
The Chief
Something’s going to have to give for the Republicans. I doubt they can win majorities (at least not lasting or significant ones) on an obstructionist platform, but if they try bargaining with the Dems, then their base will become disaffected. Either they give up the hard-line conservatism or they’re stuck as a minority party.
It doesn’t help them that the Democrats finally seem to have found their guts. Their best hope with the “Just Say No” strategy was that the Dems would fail at accomplishing anything significant and then they could run over a disaffected progressive voting bloc, while whipping the Tea Party types into a frenzy. But now Health Care has passed and they can’t count on that anymore.
I don’t envy the Repubs, not that they didn’t bring it upon themselves with all the, y’know, years of ineffective government.
aimai
I agree with everyone who said “Dodd is just a sucker.” Everyone who knows him says he’s a wonderful guy, and his heart is in the right place, and all that other stuff. But over and over again he has talked, certainly this year, as though there is some “there, there” in the Senate–as though any of the Senate Republicans are interested in anything but total power/total destruction of progressive action. There isn’t. There isn’t any goodwill. There isn’t any desire to “craft legislation” there isn’t any desire to *work.* When will these guys get it? If the Republicans don’t own victory, they don’t care about legislating. There’s no country, no public good, there’s no nothing outside of winning, controlling, and cashing those checks.
aimai
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Camchuck:
This sounds about right.
The entrenched industry interests at work in the HCR debate were large enough and powerful enough that Obama, Reid, et.al. had to cut some deals with them (e.g. taking drug importation off the table) just to have a chance of getting reform thru the Senate. But the compared with the health insurance industry, Wall St. is a monster when it comes to owning Congress and most of the players in both political parties. Also something resembling a consensus has been building for decades that the status quo health insurance system was broken and needed to be fixed in some fashion – even the Reps in the Senate gave lip service to that idea by pretending to have their own solutions. The idea that the FIRE sector is broken is very new compared with health care. Perhaps that will be mitigated by the more dramatic nature of the sudden crash in 2007-2008 compared with the slow motion disaster that was health care, but I’m not sure how this is going to play out.
cmorenc
…Snowe is ALREADY seen as such an unreliable apostate by the hard-right/Teabaggers that a serious (and likely successful) primary challenge from the right is ALREADY highly likely for her in 2012. It’s going to be very difficult to impossible for her to walk back far enough between now and then to avoid this possibility, and the national leadership of the GOP aren’t in anywhere near sufficient control of the Teabagger contingent to head off this impluse. More like they are being dominated by having to do homage to the Teabagger movement to avoid risk of primary challenges themselves.
Snowe’s only chance for survival in 2010 is to either:
a) switch parties and become a moderately conservative dem;
b) take (hopefully only one) page from Lieberman, and run as an independent in the fall general election.
MTiffany
@ericblair: I believe the appropriate lyrics are “we got no fear, no doubt, all in, balls out.” That’s a great strategy, but one the Democrats really aren’t very good at. The sad thing is, it would totally work, given the plate of shit that the Republicans just served themselves with their loss on HCR. But the Dems will be Dems and they’ll probably cave rather than risk being called names by the Republicans. “They called me liberal! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
maus
@1
The same way teabaggers are “independents”, they call themselves “independents” and “moderates” completely independent from reality.
Republicans believe definitions should change to their expectations and whims.
Ailuridae
I actually don’t think that Dodd’s wrong here at least as it relates to financial regulation. The Democrats might not pick up enough Republicans to invoke cloture after their own likely corporatist Democrat (and Tim Johnson who is from a state that preys on the country) defections but there are a whole lot of places (and Maine is one of them) where a Republican simply cannot cast a vote for Wall Street. I can’t imagine George Voinovich for instance having one of his last votes in Congress be to protect Wall Street.
The problem is that Dodd is talking to fuckshits like Corker and Shelby instead of just getting a good bill out of committee and then letting public opinion and the President twist arms.
Gregory
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Yeah, and it’s not like the so-called “liberal media” — let alone the Republicans who supported identical proposals not so very long ago — would admit it, but I’ve been thinking: For all the talk of “repeal and reform,” the only way this measure really has to move is a more liberal direction. If the exchanges don’t work, public option. When private insurance still sucks, single payer.
The Republicans went all in on lockstep opposition. But when the Democrats took stock after the Brown election and realized the bad consequences of failure, I don’t think the GOP really thought out the consequences of their own failure.
Then again, there’s little reason to believe they ever do.
Barry
Ailuridae: “…but there are a whole lot of places (and Maine is one of them) where a Republican simply cannot cast a vote for Wall Street. I can’t imagine George Voinovich for instance having one of his last votes in Congress be to protect Wall Street.”
Never, ever assume that one’s oppenents can’t or won’t lie, and lie skillfully. The GOP won’t vote to protect Wall St, they’ll vote to Protect the Free Market and to Keep America Strong.
NR
Yay! More corporate-friendly legislation for everyone!
geg6
@Napoleon:
THIS.
mclaren
That’s the single best justification for passing this non-reform HCR bill. Sure, the bill doesn’t really fix our broken health care delivery system…sure, the bill does essentially nothing to control costs…but if the HCR bill breaks the Republicans, then it’s worth it.
This country can’t solve its problems if one of the political parties in our 2-party system is stark staring insane.
If passage of the HCR bill serves as shock therapy to jolt some Republicans out of their delusional dreamworld, then it’s a good move overall.
Admiral_Komack
“I think, frankly, there are a number of Republicans who went along with the strategy of ‘just say no’ who were never really happy with it, but if it worked they would go along. They saw it fail. And now they’ve had enough of it. and they really want to be involved in crafting things.”
-Gee, you’re dumb.
New Yorker
I can’t wait for Scott Brown to start crossing the aisle, as he was hailed as The One, The Savior, The Messiah by the wingnut noise machine a few weeks back. Now they’re going to hate him more than anyone else on the planet when he starts behaving like, well, like a Republican from Massachusetts would be expected to behave.
Sorry, but he represents the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, not the people of Roger Ailes’ boardroom.
NobodySpecial
I do not trust the judgment of Dodd as far as I could spit a rat.
liberty60
I think the senior Republicans honestly do want to work together- most of them are not serious Teabaggers.
But as has been pointed out many times, they are riding this tiger- Roger Ailes got their asses elected, and its too late now to get squeamish and take back all the coded dog whistles and cheerleading they have done.
Just read any wingnut blog- they would just as happily turn their guns (literal, not metaphorical) on any GOP Senator who gets wobbly.
slightly_peeved
@Dollared:
It’s hardly his invention. The quote “Feed your troops on Victory” is attributed to General Sir John Monash, one of the most successful generals of World War I. Rather than following the British motivational tradition of pushing troops into a giant meat grinder and shooting them for cowardice if they didn’t go in, he kept his soldiers well-fed, well-supplied and well-protected by artillery and air support. I’m guessing Sun Tzu also made comments in a similar vein.
There’s a comic by Kate Beaton on him here.
Quaker in a Basement
And that, friends, is 11-dimensional chess as she are played.