Bi-partisanship is, by definition, support of an issue by members of both parties, particularly political parties. So when a bill passes with no support from the GOP in the house and two votes out of forty from the Republicans in the senate, that is not bipartisan.
Not only are the Republicans not being bipartisan, they are ignoring the polls which indicate that the majority of Americans support the President on this bill. Not only that -- they are couching the truth, or as I like to call it, lying.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican from Kentucky, stated that the unemployment rate in the thirties was at fifteen percent, and all that lowered it was WWII. What the Bluegrass Blowhard didn't tell you was that the unemployment rate was twenty-five percent when FDR was sworn in. Add to that fantasy the GOP telling us that the New Deal failed, and you have a desperate group of middle aged right wing white men too blocked by ideology to realize why they lost this last election so convincingly.
President Obama invited these folks to the White House, wined and dined them, and tried to reach out to them, and they rejected his efforts completely. John McCain added to the foolishness when he said Obama broke his promise to be bipartisan.
Hey Johnny, we didn't buy your act in November, and no one is buying it now.
Best of all is Michael Steele, the new head of the RNC, telling Americans that the jobs created in the governmental sector are work, not jobs. Huh? What? OK, so when you were Lt. Gov. of Maryland, that wasn't a job. I didn't think so either, because you didn't do a damn thing while you held that position.
What would the GOP do instead? In place of a stimulus package, what is their suggested alternative? Tax cuts is their answer. Tax cuts without a stimulus package is like shooting someone to minister to a bullet wound: it only creates more bleeding with no end in sight.
Cheering for the president to fail is not only thickheaded, it is self-defeating, because if this bill works only halfway, there will be less Republican senators after the 2010 election than there are Osmonds, and in much less harmony.
I eagerly await the day when Mitch McConnel threatens a fillibuster and is promptly invited to step right up and tell the country what he has to say. We can wait for days and weeks while you demonstrate the total bankruptcy of the conservative agenda. Don't forget that the C-Span cameras will broadcast every word to the American public so that nothing you say or do will go unnoticed. This will be an historic moment, the first time a fillibuster will have been broken by the rage of the American people.