Lots of email on this, much of it taking Mark’s side. For instance:

Mr. Goldberg,
I sort of agree with what Levin is saying.
For once in what seems like a long time, the House Republicans actually manned up and walked the fiscal conservative walk. Here was something impressive — they rightly said “No” to this monstrosity of a progressive wish-list of a spending package, disguised as an emergency economic boost. They even made some good speeches on limited government and the debt the Dems are creating for future generations.
We need to basically give them a pat on the back for that. Okay, perhaps you have a point that they could have for political gain stressed alternative ways to resolve the crisis more. But it seems that this approach, given that they were just shut out of the process, might cut in to the positive message of strong opposition (i.e. a distraction) and it might have been seen by the American people as taking a kind of moderated, hopeful position on the leftist’s collossal spendulus. Now, is the right response to being shut out of the process on such a monstrosity of a bill to say, ‘well, in light of this gesture of hopenchange bipartisanship, maybe we can try to work with the left more to get the bill to where we want it?’ No, I want my representatives to speak loudly against these disturbing governmental power-grabs.
Let’s try to build on the little points of conservatism and momentum that we can actually gain, not say the House Republicans screwed up in rejecting any stimulus, which it seems to me Boehner and others were not doing.

Me: I think I’ve been misunderstood or I’ve been unclear. All in all, I think the Congressional GOP did the right thing in voting against the stimulus. Indeed, it was very nice to see them man-up, as the reader says. Nor do I think the GOP should have followed the Specter-route — a view I made somewhat forcefully here. But Obama’s framing of the Republicans as “do nothing” has teeth, whether it’s true or not. If this stimulus proves to be a turkey, it would be useful for the GOP to remind voters “here’s what we wanted to do.” And, if things turn out better than we expect, it would help if the GOP could say “our plan would have gotten us here cheaper and better.” No one will remember the pork.

Update: I see Mark just responded to my earlier post. That’s all fine as far as I can tell.