Tom Edsall at HuffPo documents some rising intra-right second thoughts on this issue of Republicans voting en masse, or en demi-masse, against the bailout.
The meme was first pushed by conservative blogger Patrick Ruffini, whom Edsall quasi-profiles here. But now other conservatives are saying that the idea isn't so hot after all:
In a posting on The Weekly Standard's web site, "A Time for Grown-ups," Dean Barnett wrote "Patrick Ruffini and I were colleagues at Townhall.com; he's one of the smartest young conservatives on the web. Thus, I found the following blog post he authored utterly dismaying."
Republican and Democratic Senators, Barnett argues, "realized that the economy was teetering on the brink of calamity. They knew that if promised government action didn't soothe Wall Street's panic, then partisan concerns would look very small. Moreover, the senators likely knew that if Wall Street perceived the way out of the financial crisis had become a political football, the panic could easily resume."
From this and other things I've read and seen, including a segment on MSNBC's "Race to the White House" Tuesday evening that aimed squarely at the question of whether McCain was behaving responsibly on the bailout question, it now seems that if McCain votes no and grandstands, he likely won't get the kudos for "independence" that he may think he's going to get. Monday a "no" vote looked like a big win for him. Now, I'd say less so. It would appear that a package may be headed toward a reasonable amount of bipartisan backing.
This means that Obama ought to just go ahead and do the responsible thing and vote for it, assuming Chris Dodd and Barney Frank sign off. If McCain votes against a bill with bipartisan support, Obama can say one of us showed leadership and the other one chose to sit on the sidelines, etc., and the MSM will likely buy that.
