Republicans Blaming Pelosi: They Sure Showed Her and Millions of Americans

As the dust settled on Wall Street and the savings and retirement hopes of millions of Americans crumbled, it was clear the the House Republicans had their way. The Associated Press headline said it all, Bailout bill slapped aside; record stock plunge.

Down in the  twenty-fourth paragraph, long after the carnage and mayhem were reported came this:

Republicans blamed Pelosi's scathing speech near the close of the debate — which assailed Bush's economic policies and a "right-wing ideology of anything goes, no supervision, no discipline, no regulation" of financial markets — for the defeat. It was not much different from her usual tough words against the president and his party.

If there was ever demonstrable proof of the infantile nature of the extreme right wing of the Republican Party this was it. Out of spite, create the greatest one-day loss in the history of the marketplace. So much for the rationality of capitalism.

My guess is that not far off in the future we will see today's losses recouped, but that will be little consolation to the the millions of Americans who lost billions of dollars over a hissy fit.

My thoughts about the Democrats who voted against the bill are not kind, but at least their behavior was rational. Fearful of rabid Republican opponents who would use the issue in the election a month away, they ducked, or as we like to say here at Waxing America, "A candid examination of right-wing policies and the Democrats who play along..."

Comments

[Anonymous]

Nice try but the democrats control the house and do not need one republican to vote to pass a bill if they really want it passed. Do you think it may have to do with the fact that the general population doesn't want it passed?

[Em Richards]

If the general public didn't want it passed (and I don't disagree with that point), why didn't the GOP leadership cite that as the reason they didn't vote for it, instead of blaming Pelosi? Very, very, petty.

[nonheroicvet]

I wonder if the GOP was planning football strategy on monday morning when they told their fellows to go short.

[Mark F.]

A couple of points:

1. Today, some GOP members are refuting the GOP leadership's claim that Big Bad Nancy Pelosi hurt their feelings and made them vote against the bill (including Roy Blunt who yesterday was on the TV crying along with Boehner).

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/30/gop-blame-pelosi/

2. Also today we learn that the GOP was never going to support this bill, but wanted the Democrats to pass it for them so that they could run commercials against them wailing about how all they want to do is waste all the taxpayers. money by bailing out Wall Street.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/RNC_ad_was_cut_sent_out_before_package_failed.html?showall

[Annie]

I love Barney Frank's reaction: "Give me those 12 people's names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are and maybe they'll now think about the country." That would have helped soothe those hurt feelings!

Shame on the Republicans for not supporting their President's plan and shame on the Republicans, Democrats and especially the press for not clearly explaining the roots and consequences of this crisis. It's no wonder the American people are not in favor of this bailout: the amount of panic and lack of clear information is astounding.

[Brian]

Barney Frank is in the pocket of corporate America, now.

Thank god for the 90 plus Dems who voted against the corporate bail out with our tax dollars.

The excellent Marcy Kaptur, the people's champion from Ohio pointed out this morning on one of the corporate talk shows that the bill was bad because there wasn't anything in it for homeowners.

Dennis Kucinich, another champion of working people was ardent in his perspicacious opposition to this bad bill on commondreams.org

DeFazio pointed out today in the Progressive Dem proposal that any bill should include the tax on stock transactions that Ralph Nader has been advocating for years, aka the Tobin tax.

Where are the major Dem leaders on all these vital proposals? Reid? Pelosi? Frank? Obama?

In the trenches fighting for the American taxpayer/worker?

Not that anyone can tell.

[Brian]

Russ weighs in:

"First, the negotiators should offset the cost of the proposed bailout so that taxpayers don't get saddled with it. There are plenty of proposals out there that can be considered, including asking Wall Street to bear at least some of the cost," says Feingold.

"Second, negotiators should add meaningful provisions to help families facing foreclosure. This is more than just a matter of fairness - the housing crisis is the root cause of the credit market collapse, and unless we address it, any rescue package is far less likely to work," he continues. "Finally, negotiators must address the deeply flawed regulatory structure that paved the way for this crisis. The administration and others have said such reforms must wait for another day, but once a rescue package is enacted, we lose the leverage needed to enact tough reforms to get the financial sector to clean up its act, and we risk having to deal with this same mess all over again."
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/307193

That last point is key. You know how Naomi Klein talks about the shock doctrine? When there's a crisis of some kind, the elites use the market to further entrench their grips on us all? Well, now is the time for a counter shock doctrine. Whenever the market is in crisis and comes whimpering for a bailout, we slap the regulations back on them.