Riding on trains coming from opposite directions

by David Grand
February 25, 2009

When the conductor yelled "all aboard the Obama Express" before the final vote on the stimulus package was taken in the Senate, there were only three Republicans of the 219 in Congress who did so, while the others were climbing aboard the GOP's rickety, old train, that resembled the trains of the  Central Pacific and Union Pacific, who completed the first transcontinental railroad.

But unlike the meeting of those two trains at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869, the  Obama Express and GOP train collided head-on, thereby defeating the Republican's plan to derail the boxcars loaded with $279 billion worth of assorted items intended to put the skids to the ever-descending economy.

Fortunately, there were no fatalities, and the only injuries were to the Republican's  bruised egos. But not bad enough for them to stop acting--to borrow Spiro Agnew's famous quotation--like the "nattering nabobs of negativism."

The negative position they took over the stimulus bill only serves to underscore a long history of their anti-spending fervor. The best example of which  occurred back in 1935, when Franklin Roosevelt sent to the Congress his Social Security bill, including a provision for Unemployment Insurance.

From its arrival, Republicans began and continued an all-out attack on the idea of the government providing any form of social security, with such ferocity that the party is still branded as the party of obstructionists to today.

There was a time, however, when Republicans were more open minded and less partisan in voting on bills sponsored by Democrats, like when they were largely responsible for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. For without their help, that landmark bill would've been watered down or failed because of obstinate Democrats, aka "Dixiecrats."

Senator Everett Dirksen, who as Republican Senate leader helped to write the Civil Rights bill was the one most deserving of credit for bringing about the Senate's bipartisan vote of 73 to 27. And were he alive today, he surely would've been the fourth one to hop aboard the Obama Express, and wouldn't have been so foolhardy as those firebrand Republicans, who are willing to bet all their chips on the stimulus plan failing, so that they, along with that blowhard, Rush Limbaugh, can yell from the highest tower: "I told you so."

  For if it turns out, as I believe it will, that their hopes were nothing more than wishful thinking, they will not only have to eat crow but will have to take the blame for the irreparable damage to their party, whose approval rating is already lower than whale dung.

Now, while I don't have a crystal ball to foresee what the future relationship between the White House and Congress will be, I fear it'll be as chilling to watch as seeing feathers stuck between the teeth of a purring cat.

The proof of the pudding will be how Republicans react to Obama's upcoming relief plan for homeowners, followed by his reform plans for Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and a national health care program.   If, however, they, along with the leftover Dixiecrats, persist in refusing to work in tandem with the White House on those all-important issues, then the only alternative, as I see it, would be to go back in 2010 to that swamp that was drained in the last election, in order to eliminate the remaining die-hard obstructionists in Congress, who escaped from the net the last time around. You can name 'em as well as I can.