How come? For the good of the country? I doubt it. No, the alliance is to destroy the Republican Party. Now, don’t get me wrong. That’s just fine with me – but don’t for one second think it’s about “we the people”. If the time comes when Hillary runs against Obama – so much for unity – it will be a dog fight.

I respect Obama and I think he’s doing a good job – but he’s not our savior. What he is, is smart enough to know that independents elected him. And Hillary painfully and late in the game sees this too. Ok – if the DP wants to destroy the RP – it needs an alliance with independents to do it. Now if independents play it right – it will be an alliance that’s about “we the people”.

There were plenty of concessions Lots of specific provisions were eliminated after the GOP said they weren’t stimulating enough. Easier access to contraception was eliminated when the GOP objected. It’s not Obama’s fault that Boehner et al. kept demanding more.

Granted he didn’t let the Republicans write half the bill. But if the GOP actually cared about any of that stuff you’d assume at least one guy would vote for the package.

The Stimulus Bill was drafted of whole cloth by Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in the House of Representatives. This is a simple fact. She said so herself and barely acknowledged even taking input from the President let alone Republicans.

There was a lot of White House rhetoric and PR photo-ops about bi-partisanship, but the bottom line from the president was to take the House bill or leave it. The only actual GOP concession in the stimulus bill came in the Senate, and it was the bare minimum set of changes necessary to buy off the three needed Republican votes (well – two since one of them was Specter).

Claire McCaskill made it crystal clear what the final product was all about when she was trying to justify the minor changes made by the Senate to the rabid left and said “the Senate bill is 90% the same as House bill.”

It is now clear that particular exercise of raw partisan political power was to no greater end than a display of political muscle and releasing the eight years of pent-up demand for pork spoils back to the Democratic party victors.

Ed Morrissey nailed it:

“It may not have been a deliberate calculation, but the disparity comes from the nature of the stimulus, and it shows just how political Porkulus was. It wasn’t a stimulus package at all – most of the money gets spent after the first year — but a collection of Democratic Party ideological wish lists and pork projects. Districts that voted Obama get twice as much money per person because Democrats controlled the pork projects and got the money into their districts. That’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s certainly revealing.

The point is that it is now obvious that the stimulus package was not even vaguely similar to what Obama claimed it was at the time. More people recognize that, and as a consequence are less likely to believe his broad, sweeping, detail-free, fear-mongering rhetoric about the health care bill now.

@Justin
A liar? I wouldn’t call it that. I’d call it your garden variety old-style Chicago-style backroom strong-arm partisan politics. But that is me and my terminology.

If I was using the same language and terminology on display here at Donklephant to describe similar deceptions and machinations by the Bush administration, then yes – using that terminology – It’s a lie.

Given that evidence it’s pretty easy to conclude Boehner would vote down the Bill of Rights if Obama proposed it.

BTW, is there a reason Donklephant hasn’t covered the violence at various health care forums? Given that fistfights and shouting people down are the ultimate forms of discourse this site seeks to eliminate I thought we’d have a thread by now.

For the record my group has been involved in Dingell’s forum. It was pretty clear the anti-Obama folk were there to make sure the forum was ruined, and maybe provoke a fight. Check out the Youtube videos, particularly the first segment of the second forum. The redhead trying to speak is actually that short, and needs to use crutches if she wants to walk any distance, but that doesn’t stop a burly dude in an military-style black beret and a Harley T-Shirt from wagging his finger in her face.

Come on…