i would suggest that these republicans could be called "lou dobbs republicans", who yesterday was singing the praises of the bill's defeat.

ps -- i saw all these signs in a yard a few blocks away from my house: "another independent for mccain", "another democrat for mccain", "mccain/palin", plus signs from the local republicans running for office like "kirk for congress" -- but no mention of republican on any of them.

i felt like adding a sign to that yard that reads "another republican pretending to be an independent".

"This Republican Party needs to be burned, razed to the ground, and the furrows sown with salt..."

Don't forget to piss in the trench.

Brooks is wrong. Republicans aren't destroying their party; they're simply contracting it to its natural size.

i'd love to know which house gop members have an "admirable belief in free-market principles? the ones who approved iraq war spending as an emergency appropriation? the ones who have enable fiscal folly? the ones who don't believe in anti-trust legislation? the ones who have tried to simplify taxes? the ones who regularly denounce oligarchic markets? the ones who let hedge fund managers treat ordinary income as capital gains?

brooks, in short, continues to live the dream, even if he pretends to be waking up.

I've thought for years that the biggest existential threat the United States faces is the Republican Party. It is a party that is fundamentally hostile to secularism, to the Constitution and the rule of law, to democracy, and to a non-plutocratic society.

I don't think the U.S. could survive another Republican presidency.

I don't want to abolish the Republican Party. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

Nothing is free. A free market is proving to be remarkably expensive.

I want a bumper sticker to put on the cars with the McCain stickers: "Yes, I am as stupid as I look."

Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality.

I'm with howard. Note how Brooks says "Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality." (emphasis added) So they've done it before; Brooks is just calling them out on it now.

Brooks well knows that the modern Republican Party operates in a fantasy world -- a fantasy world he helps create and legitimize, while pretending to be a pundit instead of a propagandist. And the "liberal" New York Times, NPR and PBS aid and abet him.

The best way to help them to their natural end is to defeat as many as possible in November. Sam Stein's column in the HuffPo today says the evil genius behind this is Newt Gingrich, who engineered the defeat (as he pretended to support the bill) as the first step toward taking over the party and running for prez in '12. Early prevention is the best treatment for the disease.

But, as the Brooks column shows, we aren't alone. Last night my lifelong Republican father said "In a few weeks there'll be a bloodless revolution, and then we can start putting the country back together," having about the same effect on me as a polar shift.

But, but...It's all because Nancy was mean to us. We couldn't vote because we were crying so much. We wanted to save the country, but she's such a meanie!

The GOP did the right thing for the wrong reasons, the problem is not liquidity as the shysters on CNBC would have you believe, it is insolvency. There is a large stock of housing that will not regain its mortgaged worth for decades, if only if because supply is greater than demand, and there aren't enough people that can afford them at that price. Either way, construction will be depressed for years, along with all the Home Depot like economic stimulus it provided.

The economists and money managers that were warning that this was inevitable are still being ignored, and plan as currently structured is not going to solve anything. The Fed and the Administrations have prevented the business cycle from functioning since 1999, and kicking the can down the road will just make the final reckoning more severe. In Jan, '07 the Fed decided to keep liquidity high and interest rates at below 2% despite climbing oil prices and a falling dollar. this is the result.

At that time i said the Dow will have to fall below 10,000 before to squeeze out the resulting puss, it the bailout passes as currently configured, it might have to go below 9,000 a year or two later.

Go read Nouriel Roubini for a rational take for what should be done. http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/253783/is_purchasing_700_billion_of_toxic_assets_the_best_way_to_recapitalize_the_financial_system_no_it_is_rather_a_disgrace_and_rip-off_benefitting_only_the_shareholders_and_unsecured_creditors_of_banks

The GOP did the right thing for the wrong reasons, the problem is not liquidity as the shysters on CNBC would have you believe, it is insolvency. There is a large stock of housing that will not regain its mortgaged worth for decades, if only if because supply is greater than demand, and there aren't enough people that can afford them at that price. Either way, construction will be depressed for years, along with all the Home Depot like economic stimulus it provided.

The economists and money managers that were warning that this was inevitable are still being ignored, and plan as currently structured is not going to solve anything. The Fed and the Administrations have prevented the business cycle from functioning since 1999, and kicking the can down the road will just make the final reckoning more severe. In Jan, '07 the Fed decided to keep liquidity high and interest rates at below 2% despite climbing oil prices and a falling dollar. this is the result.

At that time i said the Dow will have to fall below 10,000 before to squeeze out the resulting puss, it the bailout passes as currently configured, it might have to go below 9,000 a year or two later.

Go read Nouriel Roubini for a rational take for what should be done. http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/253783/is_purchasing_700_billion_of_toxic_assets_the_best_way_to_recapitalize_the_financial_system_no_it_is_rather_a_disgrace_and_rip-off_benefitting_only_the_shareholders_and_unsecured_creditors_of_banks

It's would take a lot of wooden stakes to finish off the GOP, but, it would be worthy cause.

Sorry about the repeat

My Blue Dog Democrat "representative" voted NO on it yesterday; as a poster on another blog noted, when I contacted his office last week to suggest that they consider Dodd's proposal and modify the plan rather than giving Paulson a blank check, his staffer's response was "Thank you for voicing your opinion. We do plan to oppose it." Idiots. All of them.

Jeff S, I'm with you. Let's just drown them. . .

to squeeze out the resulting puss

Meow!

Steve, why don't you write an article examining the views of progressive Democrats like Dennis Kucinich, Lynn Woolsey and Peter DeFazio who opposed the bill?

The fact is, that there were both progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans who opposed this bill for entirely legitimate reasons: they had substantive objections to the bill, or their constituents overwhelmingly opposed it, or both.

Guess what? CNN reports the stock market is "rallying". Gee, maybe there is time after all for careful consideration of alternative approaches to the problem. Gee, maybe it's a good thing the Congress didn't rubberstamp the CheneyBush gang's kleptocratic proposal.

Why don't you listen to the progressive Democratic voices who spoke out against this bill, and write something about that?

Is Dennis Kucinich unwelcome here, while David Brooks is welcome?

Not long ago, they led an anti-immigration crusade that drove away Hispanic support.

Except, of course, all the right wing nut jobs in Miami that still apparently wish for another chance to invade Cuba.

These folks need to be marginalized by both parties as they are of no value to the republic. The continued U.S. isolation of Cuba is one of the stupidest things in American politics.

Brooks can no longer mindlessly support Republicans; the crackup of the Republican party is forcing him to decide which Republicans to support. He's decided to side with George Bush and John McCain, which is hardly surprising because George Bush and John McCain are the people the the Republican Party officially thinks should be running the country.

I'm not impressed. A temporary squabble between the corporatists and the pitchfork populists. They'll have this patched up in a few days, and get back to jointly denouncing Barack Obama's plans for a Marxist pro-jihad dictatorship.

I hold no brief for House Republicans, or for the 90 or so House Democrats who also voted against the modified Paulson Plan, on the merits. However, the plain fact is that voting no on this legislation was the popular vote to cast, and not by a little bit either.

To cast an unpopular vote on a complex subject, Congressmen ordinarily need to be able to refer to an authority commanding public trust, able to warn of looming disaster and be believed. There is no such authority in Washington right now. This leaves Congressmen being asked to vote for a bailout plan devised by Sec. Paulson and Fed chief Bernanke, representatives of the class of people the public believes created this problem in the first place.

I'm not making judgements here on the merits of the Paulson Plan, or even on the imminence of the financial crash it is intended to avert. Based on what I know, I probably would have voted for it as the best option on the table given the stakes.

I'm just saying that in politics you do what you can do. The Congressional leadership (and the Presidential leadership) ought to have known there would be great difficulty in doing this. Now they will have to work out a way to do something else.

I'm not impressed. A temporary squabble between the corporatists and the pitchfork populists. They'll have this patched up in a few days, and get back to jointly denouncing Barack Obama's plans for a Marxist pro-jihad dictatorship. Posted by: Steve M.

Too little, too late. Once Palin commits political suicide Thursday night, the Republican party will be out of power the foreseeable future.

Now if we could just fix the Democratic Party.

I will be more than glad to give you David Brooks if you give us Dennis Kucinich. Now Brooks is YOUR problem.

Why oh why do you not see what really happened? It wasn’t talk radio hosts or ignorance or demogogary that cause the bailouts defeat. It was the simple people doing their democratic duty without being prompted to call their representatives and tell them they do not wish to part $400,000 for evey man, woman and child to give to people who specialize in pissing it away. People who live their lives trying as best to follow the rules are not going to subsidize rule breakers and criminals and they made their feelings known.

Yes please, burn and bury the GOP of today. Cart off Bush II's dead carcass and lock McCain away in the insane asylum. Out of the ashes and resurrecting itself will be a new Republican Party that combines the energy of the young with the wisdom of the old whether its Harding, Coolidge, Taft, Goldwater, some Eisenhower and even a little Reagan. Those weren't cranky old men in Minneapolis chanting "End the Fed!" They were 20-somethings, because they know the truth of what's really wrong with this economy (hnt.. it's connect to foreign policy) and why this bailout or any other plan you and the powers that be will ultimatley fail.

Yes do us a favor and kill the Boehner/McCain/Bush GOP. Ron Paul's will soon rise in its place. In fact, we're ready right now, bouyed by our first victory. Check out the increased traffic at Lew Rockwell.com.

Why oh why do you not see what really happened? It wasn’t talk radio hosts or ignorance or demogogary that cause the bailouts defeat.

I guess you don't post here frequently. I don't think a lot of the regulars believe the proposed bill was a winner. I'm glad it was defeated. I wish I had more hope, though, that it was defeated not because a few pussies on the Rethug side of the chamber were offended by Pelosi, god help her, called a spade a spade but because it needed more teeth. Had that been the case, then you probably would have seen a Democratic plurality for the bill.

Yes do us a favor and kill the Boehner/McCain/Bush GOP. Ron Paul's will soon rise in its place. In fact, we're ready right now, bouyed by our first victory. Check out the increased traffic at Lew Rockwell.com. Posted by: Sean Scallon

You're just witnessing defection from the hard right. Dead enders that no longer think the Rethugs have a spine. John Birch by a different name.

I like the furrows sown with salt... when hurling imprecations I usually stop after razed to the ground.

Give credit where credit is due.
1. Nobody trusts Bush, see no evil Bernanke or impulsive Paulson. Dodd, Frank and Pelosi are smarter but have zero credibility.
2. The two main Presidential candidates are mouthing platitudes farther out than Pluto.
3. The 2008 Libertarian ticket of Newt Gingrich-Lou Dobbs has been prodding conservatives to reject the Paulson version of Wall Street.
The media has consistently distorted the facts and hyped the stock market decline, refusing to compare it to the much greater 1987 decline.
All of the emperors are naked.

ps -- i saw all these signs in a yard a few blocks away from my house: "another independent for mccain", "another democrat for mccain", "mccain/palin", plus signs from the local republicans running for office like "kirk for congress" -- but no mention of republican on any of them. Posted by: entheo

Dino Rossi, he of bad high school mustache and basketball bench warmer, is running again for governor in Washington. He is trying to get on the general election ballot under a GOP Party "affilication." What a asshole. He's anti-abortion, nauseatingly pro-business and actually had Dick Cheney at a fund raiser once. But, he doesn't have the balls to run as a Republican.

wisdom of the old whether its Harding, Coolidge - Sean Scallon

Really, You want to include Harding and Coolidge - the ones who gave us the Great Depression?

There is no longer a Republican party. The Republican party and matters political are a Mel Brooks comedy.

There is no longer a Republican party. The Republican party and matters political are a Mel Brooks comedy.

Which Republican Party should Americans hate most; the faction that has destroyed the economy, Iraq and Afghanistan or the culture of rape, bible thumping faction that wants a return to 1650? The bible thumpers are bad, but will always be with us as a small minority. The W. Bush/Paulson/Cheney faction are the real wreckers, and their benefactors own the mass media. Bringing down the GE/Exxon Republicans will do more to save American democracy than any other action, and if the bible thumpers can be used to do it, so much the better.

David Brooks has been doing verbal somersaults for months to avoid coming out and saying the GOP is unfit to govern. So has George Will. They must be saving the punchline for the mid-November post-mortem. Profiles in candid commentary.

Trickle down Reaganomics may have been workable (I stress MAY have been) 20 years ago, but in this global economy, the trickle down gets siphoned off to China, India, and other players in the global market.

The Republicans are a lothesome group. And they stopped that bill for the wrong reasons. But I am grateful to them for doing so.

I agree that the economy is in trouble. But this huge giveaway is not the answer. Congress should treat wall street the same way the government treats an applicant for food stamp: Make them disclose every penny in assets they have and then give them only the bare minimum to survive.

Really, You want to include Harding and Coolidge - the ones who gave us the Great Depression?

He also wanted to include Taft (Robert, presumably), Eisenhower, and Goldwater, which represent isolationism, containment, and aggressive confrontation as geo-political strategies. In short, the whole gamut, from which a coherent foreign policy couldn't possibly be drawn that reconciled all three. Sort of like saying the Dems should take the Thurmond-Humphrey approach to civil rights.

In fairness, he didn't specifically mention foreign policy. But you can't simply take the most popular leaders of one's party from the past 100 years, and craft a coherent platform out of it.

The Republicans are indeed at a fork in the road, symbolized by the insurgent candidacies, orthogonal to each other, of Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. And if I were a wealthy Republican, I'd spend my money on similar, young, outside-the-box candidates instead of polluting the body politic with Swift Boat ads and such like.

On the contrary, I think you can take from each of these men and construct a coherent foreign and economic policy.

Harding and Coolidge causing the Great Depression? Pshaw! Under Harding and Coolidge there was not only prosperty but peace and diasrmament as well. Do you not forget the Washington Naval Conference and the Kellogg-Briand Pact took place during this decade? From Taft you take his opposition to foreign alliances, from Eisenhower you take the fact he ended the Korean War and warned us all against the military-industrial complex. From Goldwater you take a commitment to decentralization (outside of a Cold War complex) and it should be remembered that Reagan, for all his supposed bellicosity, signed the START agreements that reduced nuclear warhead arsenals. The Cold War ended just as he left office. He visited Moscow and delcared it over.

When the wars end and the troops are brought home and the bases overseas are closed and the defense budget is cut in half, then you'll see a real savings to the taxpayer and to the country at large. We could have had that with Clinton, but he was more concerned about putting homosexuals in the military and women in combat instead bringing the country a true peace dividen. So the troops stayed in Germany and Japan even though they were not needed there. Oh, we inavded Haiti and Bosnia and bombed Serbia too.

Take the war footing out of our military budget and live within our means and get rid of the Federal Reserve's printing press and you'll see true prosperity in the country instead of one built on cheap credit. That was the message of the Republican Party once upon a time and it can be again with a new generation leading it.

In regards to Mr. Brooks, I am a nihilist.

Oh boo hoo for Bobo Brooks. He and all of his fellow "reasonable" Republicans plighted their troth with the lunatic fringe long ago, and continue to excuse their excesses, except for those occasions when it becomes so particularly egregious the "Reasonables" happen to notice it's about to cost them the next eleventy-seven elections. David Brooks, you are nothing but an intellectually dishonest shill, and besides, this was a bad bill that deserved to go down. Now, if the Dems will only exercise a little real leadership (doubtful) we might actually be on the road to doing some good.

and it should be remembered that Reagan, for all his supposed bellicosity, signed the START agreements that reduced nuclear warhead arsenals.

It probably shouldn't be remembered that he did that, since, in fact, he did not: the START agreements were signed on (START I) July 31, 1991 and (START II) January 3, 1993, both, for the United States, by President George H. W. Bush.

"Harding and Coolidge caused the Great Depression?..."
Actually, yes. The impact of these two on the economy of 1920's led America to the Great Depression exactly as those actions of Reagan and Bush I in the 1980's/early 1990's helped lead to today's present mess.
All the efforts of the Republican Party throughout the 1920's were aimed at providing "relief" for the rich; little, if anything, was done to ensure that the mass of working citizens received their fair share of the increased productivity. Throughout the 1920's, commission after commission reported that nearly 50% of the population was surviving on incomes below the poverty line - and the poverty line was a lot lower in the 1920's than it is now!
Supporting the right of labor to organize was trumpeted as the first step to communism - GM and Ford didn't have unions until the late 1930's. Strikes by coal miners for safer working conditions were put down ruthlessly. No attempt was made to assist farmers who had enlarged their operations during WWI deal with the contracted economy of the 1920's.
The Kellog-Briand Peace Pact wasn't worth the paper it was written on - there were no requirements to assist any country that was attacked. The Washington Naval Treaty was simply another way to cut government spending - otherwise we might have had to build a larger navy. And as a side result, it ensured that when WWII broke out in 1939, Great Britain didn't have the naval power to defend her Far Eastern possessions - making certain that we would be involved in any war that did break out in the Pacific. Or else watch all of Asia fall under the control of the Axis.
Then there is Coolidge's "They hired the money, didn't they?" response to the Allied debts from WWI. The debts could only be paid off if the debtors accrued enough dollars from sales of their products to buyers in the US; the increasingly higher and higher tariffs of the '20's made certain that our WWI allies couldn't do that, so the difference was actually made up by the US making loans to Germany which the Germans then transferred as reparation payments to Great Britain, France, Belgium, etc. Those countries then paid their war debts to the US using that money. 1929 cut off the flow of loans and by 1931 European financial institutions were crashing and bringing down national economies (and democracy) with them.
Short-sighted then - short-sighted now.

Why hello President Wilson, I didn't know you blogged here at WaMo straight from the grace.

Or is the spirit of FDR channeling through Doug?

In defense of those room temperature House Republicans; they were elected by room temperature conservatives in their districts. They're merely following the 'survival of the fittest' rules that govern their neck of the woods.

Macho chest thumping is more admirable in those parts of the country.

We can all hope that some day Darwinism will clean the gene pool over there. NO disrespect to progressives who are living in these districts.