And God said... No More Global Warming!

This is just fantastic.



Sorry for the layoff.   Work got in the way of bloggery fun times.

A Brief History of the Party of No

Arun Gupta's op ed on the Republican and Tea Party obstructionist strategy is informative, riveting and terrifying.   It points out the irrational nature and bigotry of the right and the poor strategy of the Obama Administration and Democratic leadership of pandering too heavily to the right and open the door for a hard swing come November.  There's a lot to be concerned about if you're even remotely moderate-minded a person.   

The entire lengthy piece is well worth the read.  Some highlights:

I use “the right” instead of “Republican” or even “conservative” to describe the movement and its ideas. Until recent years, there was a breed of socially liberal, fiscally conservative Republican that retained a foothold in the GOP. These Republicans provided critical support for civil rights and other progressive legislation. This segment, which tended to concentrate in the North, has largely shifted to the Democratic Party (with the result of pushing the Democrats further to the right). So while the right may now overlap significantly with the Republican Party, it wasn’t always so. More important, as shown by the Christian Right in years past and the Tea Party today, the right will try to purge those Republicans deemed not sufficiently orthodox, making the party more and more extreme.

 

The Tea Party is the latest chapter in the history of the Republicans as the “Party of No.” Its existence depends on continuous promotion from FOX News, organizing by Republican consultants, front groups such as Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, and the GOP itself. Much of the Tea Party’s funding comes from right-wing foundations through the front groups, and its politics are anti-government, anti-labor, pro-corporate and often socially conservative, which is the same agenda the right has been pushing for more than 30 years.

(emphasis mine) and

Wallace pioneered the race-based appeals that still excite the populist right today. But he was also a deft cultural warrior who, writes Carter, “knew that a substantial percentage of the American electorate despised the civil rights agitators and antiwar demonstrators as symptoms of a fundamental decline in the traditional cultural compass of God, family, and country, a decline reflected in rising crime rates, the legalization of abortion, the rise in out-of-wedlock pregnancies, the increase in divorce rates, and the proliferation of ‘obscene’ literature and films.” Add gay marriage, Islamophobia and immigration, and you pretty much have the right’s culture war agenda of today.

and

There is one final step in how the right mobilizes grassroots support behind an obstructionist agenda. Few people mull over philosophical concepts when making political decisions. That’s why mobilizing group resentment and solidarity simultaneously is so effective. It gives people a way to see both enemies and allies in their daily lives. In the case of immigrants, the narrative is about “illegals” stealing jobs and social services from taxpayers. In the case of the Obama administration, the story is that taxes are being stolen from hard-working Americans to support parasites ranging from welfare recipients to Wall Street bankers.

 and finally

However irrational this position may be, the logical consequences are not: anything Obama and the Democrats do must be opposed because it is a life-and-death struggle. In opposing the health care plan, the right is not just trying to deny services to the undeserving, it is affirming and protecting free choice, family, the sanctity of life, the market, God, country, the Constitution – all arguments trotted out in the last year.

 

Like the Clinton years, no matter how much Obama tries to appease Republicans, he will remain under attack and be held responsible for bizarre crimes and conspiracies because the right has nothing to gain from compromise. In fact, Republican opposition has devolved from the philosophical to the tactical. The right-wing noise machine frames Obama and the Democrats as the source of all evil, making compromise virtually impossible. Republicans now assail Obama policies they used to champion from the market-friendly health care law and huge tax cuts in the stimulus bill to the bipartisan deficit commission and pay-as you-go budget rules.

 

At the same time, the Obama administration has stoked support for the Tea Party by providing aid and comfort to Wall Street rather than Main Street. The Republicans have exploited legitimate anxieties over high unemployment, a shrinking economy and onerous taxes by scapegoating the weak and marginal for policies that are structural and historical in nature.

 

The lesson for Obama and Democrats is not that they went too far to the “left,” it’s that they went too far to the right. Obama had the political capital and the leverage over the banking and auto industries to push for a “Green New Deal” that could have restructured the transportation and energy sectors and created millions of new jobs. Slashing the bloated military budget while fighting for some type of single-payer health care – instead of a plan that uses public money to subsidize the for-profit healthcare industry – budget deficits could have been constrained while reducing the financial burden of medical bills for most American households. Implementing such an agenda could have created a mass constituency that would fight for a progressive vision and against the right’s repressive politics.

 

The right has well-thought-out ideologies, a specific agenda, clearly defined enemies, and ruthlessly pursues power to achieve its goals. And it’s fighting a Democratic White House and Party that stand for nothing, which is why being the “Party of No” will continue to be a winning strategy for Republicans.

What does this tell you?

Sullivan posts a nugget from Weigel/WaPo about Favorability of the term Libertarian:

Overall, 38 percent of Americans view "libertarian" favorably to 37 who view it unfavorably. Democrats (39-37) and independents (44-32) view the term most favorably, while Republicans view it negatively by a 13-point (31-44) margin.

I'd say this makes pretty clear how someone like me - who enjoys the finer points of Libertarianism - can be turned off by the current GOP and Tea Party Movement.  These groups are not free thinking or small-government-minded at all if they perceive a movement like Libertarianism as a negative thing.   More negative than those evil pinko socialist liberals do, to boot.

More on Epistemic Closure

William Saletan does a tremendous job rounding up the sad state of affairs in today's partisan climate.   Funny that many of the positions he cites are exactly what I hear trumpeted from my conservative friends (not that they'll even consider reading this list, of course).  Specifically, the points Saletan makes about how the right defines themselves by their enemies and round up and cast out any dissenting members of their own group as RINOs or Closet Liberals (see:  Frum, Bartlett, Manzi, Crist, etc etc etc)

The whole she-bang is worth the read.   My favorites: 

3. Never define yourself by an enemy. Conservatives duck internal disputes because their coalition is "a motley assortment of political tendencies united primarily by their opposition to liberalism," writes Douthat. The only thing they agree on is "trashing Obama." Megan McArdle makes a similar point: "The Republican Party is not putting forward bold new ideas; its energy lies in thwarting the Democrats' policy plans." Accordingly, conservatives reinforce their identity by denouncing dissenters as closet liberals. Bruce Bartlett, who was kicked out of a conservative think tank after criticizing George W. Bush, calls this "a closed loop in which any opinions or facts that conflict with the conservative worldview are either avoided, ignored or automatically dismissed on the grounds that they must be liberal or come from liberals." The net result of this reflexive antipathy is that conservatives don't define what they stand for. Liberals do. Whatever you're for, we're against.

5. Seek wisdom, not just victory. Some conservative bloggers, responding to Sanchez and his sympathizers on the right, dismiss conversation with the liberal enemy as a political trap. Creative policy ideas won't bring Republicans to power, argues Jonah Goldberg, and "political reality" dictates that "when liberals control all of the policy-making apparatus, being the party of no is a perfectly rational stance." Hogan, a blogger at Redstate, takes this argument further, reasoning that it's OK to "distill" complex facts to propaganda "when you are at war" with the left. Such ruthlessness might be the surest path to power. But what's the point of power if you haven't learned how to govern? "An open mind seeks wisdom, first and last," writes Millman. I can't put it better than that.

10. Overcome your urges. Hogan refuses to analyze opposing arguments in detail, arguing that he lacks "the desire" to do so. Perhaps he should brush up on the tradition he purports to represent. Real conservatives understand that desire is a lousy way to run a society. You don't feel like working? Work. You don't feel like supporting the kids you fathered? Support them. You don't feel like challenging your biases? Challenge them. We're all vain and lazy. In the electronic echo chamber, it's easier than ever to shut out what you don't want to hear. Nobody will make you open the door and venture out. You'll have to do that yourself.

Bartlett on Epistemic Closure of the GOP

Bartlett rounds up some examples of the conservative establishment's ostracizing of anyone harboring a dissenting voice. 

Another example of how social pressure is brought to bear against dissident conservatives occurred shortly after this incident and also involved Heritage. Ryan Sager, then a columnist for the conservative New York Post, published a book in 2006 called The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party. His argument, similar to the one I made in my Impostor book, was that the Bush White House had abandoned the historical libertarian position of the Republican Party on many issues in pursuit of votes among anti-libertarian evangelicals.

Sager had been invited to talk to a group called the Prosperity Caucus, a loose-knit private group that meets about once a month in Washington to discuss economics and politics over pizza and beer. Usually, the group borrows a room on Capitol Hill or at a conservative think tank. As it had done often before, this particular month the Prosperity Caucus had booked a room at Heritage.

Even though Sager’s criticism of Bush was far milder than mine, he was deemed radioactive by Heritage, which canceled the Prosperity Caucus’s reservation and booted them out of the building when it came to its attention that Sager was speaking.

I have friends who chide me for "going liberal" in recent times.  It's something I love and hate all at the same time.   I love it because those who do are simply proving the point that the modern day GOP has only power-grabbing and obstructionism in mind and are mentally allergic to pragmatism.  I hate it because it's an indication that the battle for power in the GOP between the Libertarians and the Bible Thumpers is being controlled by the latter. 

I'm no liberal, this much I can assure you.  But I'm left only with a choice between these:

a) Cut taxes and spend heavily on Defense and Medicare while working to restrict Civil Rights
and
b) Leave middle class taxes alone, spend domestically on much-needed reform and be mindful of individual rights

Is there even a question which way I'd choose?

Brown > Palin

A lot has been made the last few days over Scott Brown's decision to forgo Sarah Palin's Tea Party rally on Boston Common on Wednesday.  While I try not to read too much into decisions like this - Brown's explanation was that he's busy, you know, doing Senator stuff - you have to admire the guy for leaving the loonies to themselves.  Of course, the Palin Teabag machine had to spin it as if they weren't pissed about it:

“It’s not about paying favors back,” said Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, which organized the rally and invited Brown.   “I’d happily forgo (having him) if he’s truly doing the job of the people.  He has half a century of Kennedy damage to compensate for, after all.”

Of course, this isn't the first time Brown pulled the ol' 'I'm going this way; which way are you going?" routine. 

Barbara Klain, head of the Greater Lowell Tea Party, said Brown also turned down an invite to speak at their April 15 rally in downtown Lowell.    “He said he was going to be in Washington,” Klain said. “He needs to be doing his job.”

And of course we know that Brown somehow forgot that Caribou Barbie herself called to congratulate him after his special election win.  Pretty shrewd if you ask me. 

You've gotta commend this guy for keeping a safe distance from the loony brigade.  In a state where there are more liberals and independents than conservatives, palling up with the neo-cons and fringe fuckers would be like doing tequila shots with your alcoholic uncle at thanksgiving dinner.  

Keep up the good work, Scott. 

Ron Paul Gets it Right

Those in attendance at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference were clearly confused by Ron Paul's just criticism of Republican foreign policy positions. 

Later, when it was his turn to speak at the convention, the libertarian Paul delivered a scathing criticism of Republican foreign policy views:

Conservatives spend money on different things. They like embassies, and they like occupation. They like the empire. They like to be in 135 countries and 700 bases. (boos) [...]
Don’t you think it’s rather conservative to say, ‘oh it’s good to follow the Constitution, oh, except for war. Let the President go to war anytime they want.’ [...] We can do better with peace than with war! (mixture of boos and applause)

Throughout his speech, Paul’s comments were met with an awkward tension from the crowd, many of whom appeared uncomfortable with him.

It's tremendous how Paul, who many deem to be too kooky and flighty for serious contention for president, is the one making the most sense at these things.  As ThinkProgress points out, the neo-con right already began their swift break from him after his success at CPAC in February:

Rush Limbaugh responded by claiming CPAC is “not an organization of conservatives,” and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee similarly said CPAC is becoming “increasingly libertarian and less Republican.”

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone following the steady bifurcation of the Republican Party over the last few years.  Anytime some self-proclaimed Tea Partier tries to bemoan the liberal destruction of the constitution and sprawl of our federal government, remind then about Ron Paul's position and watch them flail about and make strange noises.  

Teabaggers love stressing individual freedoms and constitutional liberty until you remind them that their position should also mean an end to American imperialism, the legalization of marijuana, allowing a woman's right to an abortion and full civil rights for the gay community.  Then, of course, all bets are off.

GOP Purges Another

Chris Currey, a pragmatic conservative, details his GOP chagrin on FrumForum.  

Highlight:

Then something happened in the 1990s. The leaders of the GOP grew belligerent. They became too religious, almost zealots. They became intolerant. They began searching for purity in Republican thought and doctrine. Ideology blinded them. I continued to vote Republican, but with a certain unease. Deep down I knew that a schism happened between the modern Republican Party and the one I grew up with. During the fight over the impeachment of President Clinton, the ugly face of the Republican Party was brought to the surface. Empty rhetoric, ideological intolerance, vengeance, and religious zealotry became the common currency. Suddenly, if you are pro-choice, you could not be a Republican. If you are for smart and sensible taxes to balance out the budget, you could not be a Republican. If you are pro-civil rights, you could not be a Republican.

It started with minorities: they left the party. Then women; they divorced the GOP and sent it to sleep on the couch. Then, the young folks; they left and are leaving the Republican Party in droves. Then, someone stood up and told my niece and my grandchild that they are not fully Americans — just second class Americans because they are homosexual. They wished hell and damnation upon my loved ones just because they are different. Are we led by priests or are we led by rational politicians? Now, we have became the party of the Old Straight White Folks. We should rename the Republican Party the OSWF rather than the GOP.

Recently, since the election of Barack Obama, common sense has left the Republican Party completely. We are in the era of craziness. As David Frum has written, a deal was there to be made over the healthcare bill. Instead, this ideological purity blinded the GOP. As LBJ said it, instead of being inside the tent pissing out, we choose to be outside the tent, pissing against the wind. And we got splashed by our own nonsense.

Is it really about Health Care?

Frank Rich's opinion piece in today's NYT is a wonderful collection of the GOP Hysteria over the Health Care bill and a frightening comparison to the similar freakouts after passage of the New Deal, Medicare and Civil Rights laws.

To be sure, this bill nothing even remotely close to the budget atrocity the Palins and Boehners want to make it out to be, costing roughly $94B per year for the first ten years, revenue generation and other savings excluded.  In the grand scheme of the $1.3T deficit Bush handed to Obama by the end of 2009, it's a drop in the bucket.  But this isn't really about "government takeover" or "power grabbing" the way the RNC/FNC puppets want you to believe it is, but rather a frantic collective clawing at the floor while being dragged out of power.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

Frum, ctd.

Bartlett with a rather telling anecdote re: the Frum firing. 

I don't know all the details, but I presume that his Waterloo post on Sunday condemning Republicans for failing to work with Democrats on healthcare reform was the final straw.

Since, he is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI "scholars" on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.

It saddened me to hear this. I have always hoped that my experience was unique. But now I see that I was just the first to suffer from a closing of the conservative mind. Rigid conformity is being enforced, no dissent is allowed, and the conservative brain will slowly shrivel into dementia if it hasn't already.

Purity tests at their ugliest...  

(via Sullivan)

Frum - One sensible voice on the right, ctd.

To the shock of, well, pretty much nobody, David Frum was pushed out of his post at the AEI on Wednesday.   Remember kids, if you come to the Republican table with sensible and realistic ideas and can see your party for exactly what they are, you can expect to be berated by the talking heads, the WSJ and ultimately shown the door. 

Three days after calling health-care reform a debacle for the Republicans, David Frum was forced out of his job at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday.

The ouster also came one day after a harsh Wall Street Journal editorial about the former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, which said that he "now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans" and accused him of "peddling bad revisionist history."

Frum made clear in a letter to AEI President Arthur Brooks that his departure after seven years at the conservative think tank was not voluntary. "I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute," he wrote, "and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship." AEI did not comment immediately.

In a brief interview, Frum said "there was no suggestion by AEI" that his sharp criticism of the GOP's health-care strategy was the reason for his dismissal. He declined to say what Brooks had told him.
"They invited me to remain associated with AEI on a non-salaried basis," Frum said, and he declined.

The GOP's Worst Nightmare Coming True

Oh this is just too good to not post.   I practically have wood over here.   Here's a great string of posts by Sullivan and others on the CBO report and other Health Care Reform related items. 

The first being a grid that shows pretty clearly how silly the right's grandstanding of Obama's inexperience has been (i/r/t pundits/blowhards citing how disjointed his own party was around the HC Debate)   New year, new tactic, new solidarity. 

 -- Nate Silver on why the left is suddenly unified behind the bill:

Personally, I think the reason for the increase in support is mostly this: the Democratic leadership, and particularly President Obama, are now fighting for this bill tooth and nail. They didn't necessarily have to do this; they could have thrown in the towel, passed off some bipartisan crap that didn't do much to help the uninsured, and called it a day. That's what Rahm Emanuel wanted to do, as Chris Bowers points out. But that isn't what Obama did: instead, he's gone all-in on the thing, potentially staking his Presidency on the outcome. Liberals like the idea of being the scrappy underdog -- being the fighter -- and Obama, after a strangely aloof performance on the health care bill throughout 2009, has been fighting the good fight.

Then some fiscal sanity figures.   Not too F'n shabby, if you ask me.  

-- Ezra Klein unpacks the CBO score:

The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years -- so, 2020 to 2029 -- it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population. To put this in context, that's more deficit reduction than either the House or Senate bill, and more coverage than the Senate bill.

-- Hotline:

The bill is now headed to the House Rules Committee, where Dems will finalize their options for moving forward. Floor action is expected on Sunday, 72  hours after the bill gets posted online.

 Chait on getting close:

MSNBC's First Read reports, "We’re told that the White House and House Dem leaders are fewer than five votes away from 216." I have always thought that the key is to get within four or five votes. Once you're there, you're very likely to win. Why? Because then the White House and Democratic leaders can concentrate all their attention on a few holdouts. And they can make an irresistible argument: If you don't vote for this bill, you will be responsible for the political and moral disaster that ensues. I just don't think anybody is willing to be the person who kills health care reform. They may hold back, they may want to see if the bill is going to die anyway, and they may want somebody else to go first. But when the finish line is in sight, they won't say no.

GOP: Paul Rand is "Not one of us"

Rand Paul, the slightly-less-kooky son of Ron Paul, is making a serious bid at the Kentucky Senate seat in 2010 marking a potentially major first impact from the Tea Party movement (sorry kiddies - and I know this may come as a shock - but the yokel from Alaska doesn't count as a success by any standards.)   One would look at this as a truly positive move for the GOP, a party in dire need of re-branding, right? 

Wrong:

Recognizing the threat, a well-connected former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convened a conference call last week between Grayson and a group of leading national security conservatives to sound the alarm about Paul.
"On foreign policy, [global war on terror], Gitmo, Afghanistan, Rand Paul is NOT one of us," Cesar Conda wrote in an e-mail to figures such as Liz Cheney, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Dan Senor and Marc Thiessen.
With an attached memo on Paul's noninterventionist positions, Conda concluded: "It is our hope that you can help us get the word out about Rand Paul's troubling and dangerous views on foreign policy.  [...]

"This guy could become our Republican senator from Kentucky?" he exclaimed. "It's very alarming."

 Yes yes.   Someone who believes in individual rights, State's rights and non-interventionist foreign policy is very alarming indeed.   Man the harpoons!   We've got a live one, Dick!  The hysteria has even gotten to the point that Trey Greyson, his Kentucky GOP opponent, has created a scare-page listing all the horrible things that Rand represents, like being Pro Choice, Pro Marijuana Legalization, Pro Gay Marriage, Anti-Iraq/Afghanistan wars, etc.    (I'll set aside for the moment that Paul is probably big-time against Health Care Reform - hey, no one's perfect!)

And the best hypocrisy, as Reason points out, is that he is Funded By Out of State Libertarians!   Wait, isn't that how Scott Brown got elected?   How the Gay Marriage repeal was denied in Maine?   How all GOP Money Bombs work?  

I guess when there are "no" ideas, morals or leadership in the Party of No, all they have left to stand on are scare tactics and smear campaigns.  And the sorry state of affairs for American politics continues...

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

Jonathan Bernstein has a great break down of the perception by GOP pols and pundits on the effectiveness of Purity Tests and nominating extreme ideological candidates for the upcoming mid-term elections.  

The larger lesson is that politicians, and political actors, tend to interpret political events based on their own biases and interests.  Polling on health care right now is ambiguous, but conservatives are absolutely convinced that the Democratic health care reform bill is massively unpopular, while liberals are equally convinced that it's quite popular.  So conservatives interpreted the 2008 election as a repudiation not of conservatism, but as a repudiation of Congressional and presidential deviations from conservatism (in fact, the 2008 election was more of a reaction to a deep recession than anything else -- of course, that just moves the argument to whether liberal or conservative parties were responsible for the recession).  It's not impossible for pols and activists to learn useful lessons, but the evidence is that they learn slowly and inefficiently.

Bottom line: yes, it is electorally bad for parties to nominate unelectable ideological candidates.  No, Republicans aren't going to stop doing it even if it costs them seats in the 2010 election cycle.

Obviously the general idea of shoving more moderate candidates out of the landscape is a nauseating prospect to this blogger.  

Those Condescending Elitists

Not that this should come as any surprise, but the Right has already begun their whine-fest from the Health Care Summit.  Apparently because that elitist a-hole Obama comes across so damned smarmy.   I love the give and take between Chait and Poheritz.   Pretty much epitomizes the two sides of this debate:

Earlier I noted of the health care summit that the Republicans in attendance seem to be divided between those who have no data at their disposal and those who have incorrect data. It is therefore difficult for President Obama, who obviously has a deep command of the issue, to engage with those Republicans without somewhat projecting condescension.

John Podhoretz shoots back:

Here’s how. By not being condescending. That’s how.

Never mind facts vs fiction; It's all in the delivery.  I wonder if the right will ever realize how this tactic looks from the outside.  It's plain to see that they're essentially cheerleading ignorance and opposing intelligent thought.

Maybe I misjudged you, Scott Brown

In his first vote as the answer to the Party of No's prayers, Scott Brown broke ranks and stopped a far-right-led filibuster on the $15B Jobs Bill.

"I came to Washington to be an independent voice, to put politics aside and to do everything in my power to help create jobs for Massachusetts families," said Brown, whose election last month gave Republicans the 41st vote that could sustain filibusters. "This Senate jobs bill is not perfect ... but I voted for it because it contains measures that will help put people back to work."

Certainly a tinge of self-preservation here, since Brown of all people knows he can't just fall into lockstep with the Tea Baggers and expect a sniff at re-election in this state.

Kudos to Brown and the other GOP senators who stood up for the people over partisan politics - something Washington's been completely devoid of for the last 13 months.