A few odds and ends that are on my mind today:

I'm wondering if Obama has a better chance of getting some Republican support on other, future legislation than he does on the stimulus bill. After all, there are some Republicans who are not neo-cons and may be up for trying some new approaches in foreign policy, even some Republicans who may get on board with healthcare reform if they can be convinced it's not socialism. But if there's one thing every single elected Republican agrees on - indeed, the only principle the Republican party has left - it's that government is bad, tax cuts are good. So essentially, right out of the box, Obama is asking them to compromise on a bill that, at its core, goes against their one bedrock principle.

It's as if Democrats were asked to...to... I've been thinking about this all day, and you know what? I couldn't think of a damn thing Democrats wouldn't be willing to compromise on. In Glenn's words,

It's very hard to find any virtuous attribute of the contemporary Republican Party, but one thing that can be said for them is that -- unlike Democrats, whose overarching desire in life is to please the needy harmony fetishists by adopting as many GOP views as possible -- Republicans are willing to incur criticisms by opposing what they oppose and supporting what they support.

Ok - I've got one: Social Security. When Bush tried to privatize it right after the 2004 election, the Democrats blocked him. Any others? Seriously, let me know.

Ok, so the Dems have extended the hand of compromise and its been bitten. Can we get on with the people's business now? To quote Glenn once more,

This is what happens every single time: the Democrats do everything possible to "accommodate" the Republican position and then get attacked anyway (they voted in large numbers for the Iraq War in and then got attacked for being soft on Terror in 2002; they voted for virtually every Bush "Terrorism" policy and the same thing happened, etc.). Here, they did everything possible to change their bill to please Republicans and nothing is happening except full-scale GOP opposition accompanied by a constant barrage of GOP attacks against them as big-spending, reckless, wealth-transferring liberals.

The Dems still have a chance, now that it's been proven for the umpteenth time that the current GOP is not interested in compromise, to make this stimulus into the best bill it can be, rather than a watered-down version designed to attract nonexistent GOP support. I've said it before, I'll say it again: post-partisan does not necessarily mean bi-partisan. Obama has repeatedly said he'll take good ideas no matter where they come from, a welcome change from the last eight years. He has not said, I will take ideas equally from both sides of the aisle, no matter what they are, mush them up into a bill, and call it centrism. That's how most mainstream media, egged on by Republicans, have interpreted what Obama said, but I really really hope that's not what he meant.

The key phrase is "good ideas." The current Washington GOP has yet to show that they have any. Obama sitting down repeatedly with GOP leaders and listening thoughtfully to their ideas is post-partisan even if he decides they're not good ideas.

***

A friend writes me, in re the family planning funding that was removed from the stimulus after Republican objections,

Were family planning advocates played? ... Is it a good thing that the lesson was learned this early? Might they rise to the challenge of real politics and establish political clout?

I think family planning advocates may sort of been played. There has been some suggestion that the family planning money was a rope-a-dope tactic - i.e., Dems knew it would catch Republicans' eye and then they could show bipartisan good faith by scrapping it. If true, I think the problem with this is two-fold. One, as I detailed above, Republicans don't respond to good faith bipartisan gestures; they're not going to "appreciate" the Dems' willingness to cave...they'll just see it as weakness.

Two, if the intended audience of the move was not Congressional Republicans but the wider public - to demonstrate bipartisanship in hopes of painting Republicans as partisan obstructionists - then I think Democrats have once again mis-judged public perception. Canceling the family planning money just makes them look 1)weak, and 2)once again, ashamed of their support for family planning.

So I hope family planning advocates will get in there and help the newly-powerful Dems articulate a strong defense of their family planning goals, so they can stop guiltily slipping funding into other bills and looking morally ambivalent.

***

Finally, since we're on the subject today of how Reps and Dems approach politics differently...remember how when Bush would sign some horrific bill into law and all the people on the right would cheer and hail the President for his action?

Yeah, we have a problem with that on the left. Acknowledging that we are all deeply traumatized from decades of Democratic betrayals, that it is our job as liberal advocates to hold Obama's feet to the fire, that it does no one any good to relax into triumphalism...acknowledging all that, reading all the liberal blogs and news sites that I do, I find myself on a regular basis nearly as depressed as I was when Bush was still president. Here's TPM's big headline today:

Obama Signs Ledbetter Act - But What About Broader Pay Equity Bill?

I mean, I'm in favor of more pay equity bills as much as the next guy. But even as the ink of Obama's signature is drying on this bill we've been fighting for for the last year or more, we're already on to another, better bill that's languishing. And look - I think it's good. We can't let our energy flag even for a moment at this pivotal transition.

It's just...I spoke to a friend last night who doesn't follow the news or blogs as obsessively as I do, and she's still totally high on Obama's win and all the great things he's signing and pushing Congress on. I envy that, I really do. I'm exhausted already.