Screw bi-partisanship

Krugman nails it:

What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?

A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.

Shorter Krugman: Obama was pwned. And the GOPers couldn't be happier:

Three months after their Election Day drubbing, Republican leaders see glimmers of rebirth in the party's liberation from an unpopular president, its selection of its first African American chairman and, most of all, its stand against a stimulus package that they are increasingly confident will provide little economic jolt but will pay off politically for those who oppose it.

They're confident it won't work because all the concessions they got for their paltry few votes removed the most effective spending and added provisions that would weaken the effect. All hope now rests on the committee negotiations. A small hope.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]