Word: republicanize
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...year, turning what could have been a worsening recession into potential growth. For President Barack Obama, whose poll numbers have dropped precipitously from around 65% to around 50% as Americans have become worried about government spending and health-care reform, that should be good news: he fought hard against Republican opposition to push the bill through Congress as one of his first legislative acts, and the fact that it's working should be a vindication. (See 10 big recession surprises...
...with employers cutting 216,000 jobs in August. While jobs always trail economic rebounds, the unemployment number is higher than economists thought it would be, even in the worst-case scenario forecast by the Treasury Department's stress tests last spring. The point is not lost on Republicans, some of whom have argued lately that no more of the stimulus money should even be spent. "The metric of this bill was job creation," says Don Stewart, spokesman for the Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell, "and it hasn't done that...
...much for bipartisanship. Wyoming Republican Mike Enzi, another participant in the Finance Committee talks, has all but abandoned the notion of reaching a deal with the Dems. With Grassley bailing out too, the only Republicans who might side with the Democrats now are Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins - though their GOP street cred is undercut by the fact that they were also the only current Republicans to vote for Obama's economic-stimulus package. Some Democrats now wonder whether Grassley had been toying with them - and particularly his good friend Baucus - from the start. One joked that Baucus...
...Grassley is not immune to the pressures from his party. Iowa Republicans have been trending rightward; socially conservative Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee won last year's presidential caucuses there. Opposition groups have been running ads in the state criticizing Grassley for his role in the health-care negotiations, and back in Washington, Senate GOP leaders have made no secret of their anxiety about it. "Senator Grassley has been given no authority to negotiate anything by all of us Republicans on that committee," said Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate GOP whip. What's more, Grassley's term as ranking Republican...
...grand bipartisan deal is possible - though he suggests that the way to get there is through a Democratic surrender. "There's a feeling that the only way to get a bipartisan agreement is to defeat a Democratic proposal on the first hand, and then the Democrats will come to Republican leadership, and then, at that point, they'll know the only way they're going to get health-care reform is bipartisan," he recently told Iowa reporters...