DERRICK Z. JACKSON
Republican obstinacy: How's it working?

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe Columnist | February 18, 2009

NOT EVEN the stimulus bill stimulated the Republican Party into any
human feeling. It heard not the screams of 4 million people losing their
jobs in the last year, not the slamming doors of shuttering factories,
nor the shrieks at kitchen tables from Saco to Sacramento as working
Americans open their mail to see they've lost 40 percent and more on
their 401ks.

With the collective livelihood of America at stake, only three of 219
Republicans in the House and the Senate voted for the $787 billion
economic recovery package, and the three who did - Maine's Susan Collins
and Olympia Snowe, and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter - slashed what they
could before passage in the Senate.

The party displayed the very obstinacy that lost it the White House.

Lest we forget, and the party sure must have thought we did, its
standard-bearer, President Bush, turned the $128 billion surplus of
President Clinton into a $1.2 trillion deficit. For that, a grand 17
percent of Americans in a New York Times/CBS poll approved of Bush's
handling of the economy as he left office. In a Gallup poll, only 5
percent of Americans thought Bush made progress on the economy, a
gracious 7 percent said the economy stood still, and 87 percent said we
lost ground. The 5 percent who said the economy was better could only
have been Wall Street CEOs, the Patriots' sudden star and suddenly rich
Matt Cassel, and free-agent baseball pitcher C.C. Sabathia, who signed
with the Yankees for $161 million over the next seven years.

A CNN poll found that only 13 percent of Americans believed the outgoing
Bush "brought the kind of change the country needed." So America elected
Barack Obama as the "Change We Need."

Obama, bless his faith in the political healing arts, got out of his
Democratic motorcade and, instead of trying to run the Republicans over,
kept Republican Robert Gates as defense secretary, made Republican Ray
LaHood transportation secretary, and offered New Hampshire's Judd Gregg
the chance to be commerce secretary. The stimulus package was not only
paired back on job-saving or job-creating funding, the Democrats allowed
more Republican-inspired tax breaks than there otherwise might have been.

The Republicans responded to Obama's motorcade by throwing nails in
front of it.

The pullout of Gregg was telling because it apparently was partially due
to a controversy regarding how much influence he would have over the
Census. The Census is gearing up for its 2010 count, and it has always
been controversial as to how carefully it counts people of color,
particularly in underserved but rapidly growing areas. Undercounting, of
course, leads policy makers to underestimate both the economic needs of
Americans and their political clout in redistricting. Gregg had opposed
the efforts of President Clinton to increase funding for more accurate
counting. It was just as well that he dropped out, and a reminder that
the Republicans still cannot count.

By their obstinacy, they are extending Obama's honeymoon, such as he can
have one in an economic crisis. Major polls this month show him with
approval ratings floating between 62 and 76 percent. Approval ratings
for the Republicans are running between 32 and 44 percent.

Yet, the Republicans are still running around trying to poison the talk
shows, telling Americans how government is terrible at creating jobs.
Never mind soldiers, police, teachers, fire fighters, and garbage
collectors. No, they run around calling the stimulus garbage, even as
maggots keep crawling out of the carcass of the last administration. It
did not work to keep Obama out of office, and America is in such bad
shape that it is unlikely that it will work to turn America against him.

In fact, with every obstinate act, Republicans make Obama's efforts to
form bipartisan agreements look brilliant. It is building capital for
Obama to the point that if the time comes when Obama has to say "my way
or the highway" on rebuilding highways and transit systems, he will get
his way because the people will start voting out the lawmakers who bring
only nails to the table, to throw at Obama's motorcade.