Do I Detect. . .

. . . a GOP testicle?

As Republicans confronted President Barack Obama in another budget battle last week, their leadership included another new face: Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, who as the party's chief vote wrangler is as responsible as anyone for the tough line the party has taken in this first legislative standoff with Obama. This battle has vaulted Cantor to the front lines of his party as it tries to recover from the losses of November.

As Republican whip, Cantor succeeded again on Friday in denying the White House the support of a single House Republican on the stimulus bill. That was a calculated challenge to the president, who, in his weekly address on Saturday, hailed the bill as "an ambitious plan at a time we badly need it."

Cantor said he had studied Gingrich's years in power and had been in regular touch with him as he sought to help his party find the right tone and message. Indeed, one of Gingrich's leading victories in unifying his caucus against Clinton's package of tax increases to balance the budget in 1993 has been echoed in the events of the last few weeks.

This after the Demorats, throwing their much hallowed "bipartisanship" right off the roof to land in the dumpster, crushed through a $787 BILLION dollar "stimulus" package.

House Republican leader John Boehner(R -Ohio) summed it up best when he said: "The bill that was about jobs, jobs, jobs has turned into a bill that's about spending, spending, spending." The 1,071-page bill, which you KNOW that NO ONE has actually read, will be the source of these comments in the upcoming weeks:

"I didn't know that was in there!"

Mark my words.

And that was the point. This bill's ramdown occurred precisely because Mr Obama and the Demorats didn't want anyone to completely read the bill.

Yes, the bill was in such dire need of passage that Mr Obama then took a vacation to Chicago. He won't sign the bill until Tuesday.

Even the UK Times Online wrote, of the "stimulus" package:

RONALD REAGAN started it, Bill Clinton finished it and last week Barack Obama was accused of engineering its destruction. One of the few undisputed triumphs of American government of the past 20 years – the sweeping welfare reform programme that sent millions of dole claimants back to work – has been plunged into jeopardy by billions of dollars in state handouts included in the president’s controversial economic stimulus package.

This government will be the undoing of the American people.

BZ