Last October I wrote a journal in which I predicted that the new Republican Senate would act exactly the way that they are acting now
if they could keep the Dems from getting enough votes to achieve cloture in the Senate. Here is a link.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4295390I am going to pull a Corsi and quote myself.
Thirty-nine GOP seats (in case Lieberman switches) means Democrats will finally enact universal health insurance. The Blue Dog Democrats may need some arm twisting, but that is what earmarks are for. Fear of universal access to healthcare is the number one reason why the RNC wants to paralyze the next Congress. To borrow an analogy from Chris Matthews, if they can hold onto 40 plus seats, they will treat universal health insurance like a SIDs infant in its crib and smother it before it leaves the Senate Chamber.
The Republicans think that they have three things going for them in the 2010 elections.
1) The party in power usually loses seats in Congress in the off year, especially if the economy is bad. (They are forgetting 1934).
2)
If they do the bidding of Big Business and keep Democrats from passing health care and any other legislation that the corporations do not like, they expect to be rewarded with lots of cash. Big Pharm, Big Energy and especially Big Banking will pay them billions. The bailout funds given to Wall Street that was not used to free up credit but which was used instead to pay out bonuses to execs----those funds are obviously going to be used to line the GOP coffers. The banks knew that they would receive criticism for giving the bonuses. However, corporations can not make donations. Only their employees can. So, they had to turn bailout dollars into cash in the hands of executives who will turn around and hand it out to friends, family and trustworthy Republicans. All of them will donate the maximum amount to people in Congress and to state governors who obstruct the stimulus and recovery. So, when 2010 arrives, these Republicans will be flush with cash, even though their popularity may be low. That way they can buy journalists, saturate the airwaves with ads and basically use money to create the appearance of public popularity.
I am so sure that this is going on that I challenge the IRS (which keeps track of these things) to monitor the gift giving of bank execs to see to whom they donate money and to whom their gift recipients donate money. I expect that the IRS will see a very clear pattern.
The DOJ also needs to prosecute the banks which engaged in predatory lending practices which contributed to the mortgage crisis. When people realize that it was the Wall St. investors (the ones who were booing relief for home owners today on CNBC) that caused our problems, Republicans' ties to these SOBs will become a serious liability.
3) The recession will be used as an excuse to stall on election reform. Democrats need to be strong and demand that paperless electronic voting be outlawed, even if it means bringing back plain old fashioned paper ballots in 2010. They use them in Canada. We can use them here. No more stolen elections.
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