Have we seen the future and it's ugly? I'm talking about the successful Republican effort to block the paltry $15 billion in bridge loans to the Big Three.
The hypocrisy should be well-known. The biggest Republican opponents of the bailout have large foreign automaker "transplant" factories in their states. Also, they are all terrified of attempts by the United Auto Workers to organize those plants (even though, contrary to right-wing propaganda, wages aren't that different between domestic and transplant factories). The bridge loans would have amounted to about $5,000 per job, while Alabama paid some $250,000 per job to lure Mercedes to build there. Overall the Southern states have paid about $150,000 per job in incentives to build a manufacturing base controlled by foreign automakers. Finally, this is political payback against Michigan, Ohio, what's left of the industrial Midwest and union workers for going for Obama in the election.
Republicans didn't filibuster the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, which has neither unfrozen the credit markets nor shown itself to be accountable or competently directed. It's a giveaway, not a loan. They're not raising a peep about $2 trillion — with a "T" — in funds dolled out to anonymous fat cats by the Federal Reserve. But given a chance to once again stick it to working people, especially in states hardest hit by Republican trade and industrial policies, they rush to the barricades.
I'm disappointed that the auto bailout as crafted seems to contain nothing transformative. But the only thing we need less than business-as-usual in Detroit is to lose the largest remaining piece of industrial base we have. Especially one so connected with building the middle class and at a time of such economic peril.
But the larger issue is that Democrats failed to win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Unless Barack Obama finds a Reaganesque way to go over the heads of the Congress to the American people, it's clear that the Mitch McConnells of the Senate will filibuster and block his entire program. The danger of the moment means nothing to them. Democrats had better quit celebrating and wake up.
It’s hard to see how a Republican Joe Sixpack sees his party sticking up for him rather than Wall Street fatcats. Since the party has purged itself of the intellectuals, the moderates, the Hispanics, and secularists, what bridges remain to be burned? Joe Sixpack, your shop steward wants to talk to you.
Given the Pavlovian stimulus/response relationship between talk radio and the white working class, the broad outlines should be easy to spot. Democrats are giving “their” money away to blacks, corrupt union bosses, and gays. Only Republicans can save the country from damnable liberals and their soft-on-crime judges. Help Newt keep William Ayres off the Supreme Court!
Since Republicans have little left in their ideological arsenal except pyromania, there won’t be much incentive to work pragmatically with the new president. Obama can possibly appeal to a few moderates and John McCain, but the fury of the dittoheads will probably check their bipartisan impulses. In the meantime, Joe Sixpack will see friends and family buttressed by a safety net Democrats created. What will he think? That as bad as Republicans are, the thrill of playing with matches answers a deeper need within? The next four years will be interesting although at this point, plodding and earnest would make my heart sing.