Hotline After Dark -- All For One, One For All
"World News" led with the CIA station chief in Algeria accused of rapes. "Evening News" led with the stimulus package passing the House without any GOP votes. "Nightly News" led with the U.S. Postal Service threatening to take away a day of mail delivery.
Although the stimulus bill passed the House 244-188, not one GOPer voted in favor of the plan. 11 mostly conservative Dems also voted against the measure. A number of GOPers and one Dem who defected spoke about their opposition to the package:
Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN): "Every single Republican in the House of Representatives decided to stand with the American people and reject this so-called stimulus bill. ... This was a partisan bill, exclusively written by the Democratic leadership in the House. ... I'm proud of the House Republicans who took a stand for our alternative, which would be not a massive wish list of liberal spending, but tax relief for working families, small businesses and family farms" ("Lou Dobbs Tonight," CNN, 1/28).
Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS), on the WH promising blue dogs "pay as you go": "President Obama ran on change. This isn't change. George Bush during the height of the war cut taxes, increased spending, doubled the national debt on his watch. And this is just more of the same, in my opinion. ... The nation borrowed $800 billion between the Revolutionary War through Gerald Ford's presidency. In one vote, the nation's going to borrow another 800 billion. This is nuts" ("Lou Dobbs Tonight," CNN, 1/28).
Rep. Don Manzullo (R-IL): "We had $825 billion bill, about $90 billion worth for infrastructure, $50 million for national endowment for the arts, $1 billion for post 2010 census examination. You can go on and on and on and on. This was not a stimulus bill. Just a tiny portion was. ... If it had been a true stimulus bill, I would have voted along with the rest of Republicans" ("Rachel Maddow Show," MSNBC, 1/28).
More after the jump.
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Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA): "We did learn from our mistake. Just like somebody you put in prison for committing a crime, Republicans were voted out for not acting like Republicans. And I think we've owned up to it. ... We were wrong to go along with the last president on spending bills one after another. We ran up the cost of government over and above the war on terror, and we shouldn't have. But that doesn't change the fact that today we are talking about the new administration and the new Democrat Congress that is making our spending look like peanuts" ("Hardball," MSNBC, 1/28).
Dems, meanwhile, were asked about the promise of bipartisanship:
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), asked if the bill will be better because GOP concerns are no longer going to be considered: "I really hope it's a game-changer. Either the Republicans come to their senses and support things that really put people back to work and rebuild this country or on the Senate side and in the conference, or the White House figures out that we've got the right formula and they come our way" ("Rachel Maddow Show," MSNBC, 1/28).
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), asked if you can have a bipartisan DC if you don't have GOPers and conservative Dems: "No. By definition, if you don't have Republicans, you can't have bipartisanship. We've seen this before. But it does also say that elections matter. What you had was an election in which the philosophy that the Republicans had put forward ... lost fairly heavily in the Congress. A different philosophy won. ... The electorate has said no, we want to go a different way. And that's what we're doing" ("LKL," CNN, 1/28).
DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen: "We hope to pick up more Republican support in the Senate. But at the end of the day, we've got to get the job done here, and that's why we're moving today" ("1600," MSNBC, 1/28).
A number of pundits also weighed in:
Laura Ingraham: "It's great news because, first of all, there's signs of life in the Republican Party. You know, a lot of conservatives over the past few years have been pretty dispirited and demoralized, thinking that Republicans are basically phoning it in and pretty spineless. And for all the Republicans to stick together on this and really represent their core constituents and not be bowled over just by the Obama charm factor and the graceful entrance on Capitol Hill by President Obama, I think is something pretty impressive" ("On the Record," FNC, 1/28).
CNN's Borger: "The Republicans in the House took a risk. They really wanted a unanimous vote. My sources told me that there were probably 30 Republicans who said that they could have voted with the president. But they got whipped into line by the House Republican leadership. ... They needed to stand united, they thought. And this was really in a way not so much a vote against Barack Obama as it was against Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats in the House. So, Barack Obama walked into a fight House Republicans have been having with House Democrats for years" ("No Bias, No Bull," 1/28).
CNBC's Harwood: "It tells us three things about our politics. One, the reality of polarization, how deep and profound it is. Two, the Republican leadership was more effective than many people in Washington thought it would be. And three, there is in fact some righteous indignation by Republicans about what they see as a package that is an all-Democratic package" ("1600," MSNBC, 1/28).
