I hear Fred Thompson was up on Capitol Hill today, giving encouraging words to House Republicans. It sounds like quite a few members of the House GOP think their Senate counterparts are on a fool’s errand–that no amount of tinkering is going to fix a bill that was conceived to steer cash to Democratic interest groups, not to actually generate economic growth.
Despite what I wrote in the immediately preceding post, there are some close to this process who think President Obama made an incredible strategic error in not leaving Washington in these first two weeks. It is the members who are going back home to their districts and discussing their problems with the stimulus. “He’s ceding the messaging in the districts to the members, and not going to the public himself–instead he’s throwing Super Bowl parties and eating Wagyu beef . . . Maybe he thinks these web videos are sufficient.”