But the most important development of the day involves the Republican Party in the House and the Senate. It appears that the Bush administration's plan to hand $700 billion to Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson for the purpose of buying up bad debt isn't flying with rank and file Republicans at all.
Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky emerged from deep obscurity to proclaim that “This massive bailout is not a solution. It is financial socialism and it's un-American.”
It didn't set too well with House Republicans either:
And a visit by Dick Cheney and Josh Bolton made things even worse.“Just because God created the world in seven days doesn't mean we have to pass
this bill in seven days,” said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.Added Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., “I am emphatically against it.”
The problem for the Republicans is this. If they follow their conservative instincts and oppose the bailout on principle, Republicans risk a moment of truth in which they look like the irresponsible ideologues they are.
But they're also creating a huge problem for the McCain campaign and the Bush administration which is trying to help the McCain campaign. If Congressional Republicans oppose Paulson's Big Bailout on principle, then the only chance to pass anything is to seek Democratic support. The Bush administration has recognized this. As a result, Bush have acceded to Democratic demands for items like Congressional oversight, protection for mortgage holders, and severe limitations on CEO salaries. The Bush administration has long been successful in stiffing the Congressional Democrats because of theunanimous support they were getting from the Republican caucus. Without that, the Bush administration has had to give into the Democrats on every point except the Democratic insistence on exchanging debt relief for equity in financial companies.
So has John McCain.
In this way, the Bush bailout proposal has cracked the foundation of the Republican Party in lockstep support for Bush administration positions. That's a great deal of what's underlying McCain's stunt proposal to bring the presidential campaigns back to Washington. If the bailout proposal becomes a largely Democratic initiative, the Republican Party will look irrelevant on the biggest issue of our time just as the country is moving into an election.
It's a deadly combination for a Republican candidate like McCain. So he decided to pull a big stunt on Obama and suspend his campaign.
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1 comment:
But will his stunt have much impact? Obama has answered publicly by saying something to the effect of "a president has to consider more than one thing at a time."
Perhaps McCain simply isn't ready to defend his Bushist policies that have obviously helped along the development of the present economic crisis.
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