Andrew Sullivan attacks Congressional Republicans' implacable opposition to the stimulus bill:
The GOP has passed what amounts to a spending and tax-cutting and borrowing stimulus package every year since George W. Bush came to office. They have added tens of trillions to future liabilities and they turned a surplus into a trillion dollar deficit - all in a time of growth. They then pick the one moment when demand is collapsing in an alarming spiral to argue that fiscal conservatism is non-negotiable. I mean: seriously.
The bad faith and refusal to be accountable for their own conduct for the last eight years is simply inescapable. There is no reason for the GOP to have done what they have done for the last eight years and to say what they are saying now except pure, cynical partisanship, and a desire to wound and damage the new presidency. The rest is transparent cant.
I think Sullivan overstates the bad faith -- that stupidity and hypocrisy are as significant as cynicism -- but no one ought to take the Republicans seriously. They signed a blank check for a disastrous war while borrowing money from China to give tax breaks for the wealthy, almost doubling the national debt in the process. Whatever they say about fiscal discipline, the Bush tax cuts vastly exceed the cost of the stimulus, as does the $3 trillion package of tax cuts that over 90 percent of the Republican caucus voted for instead of the $800 billion stimulus bill. Sullivan says the correct response is contempt, but I think ridicule may be more appropriate. This is a clown show.
