Politico Helps The GOP Out

The Republican plan to portray any government worker as an evil Randian parasite leeching off the taxpayer and providing nothing in return has progressed to the point where the $26 billion scraped together to save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, cops, and firefighters in this rotten economy is now considered to be "politically risky" for the Democrats.

The risk for Democrats as they seek to bolster their flagging election prospects is that some of their vulnerable members will feel like they have to walk the plank, yet again, on a politically unpopular economic-stimulus agenda, while reminding voters of their failure to handle routine budget work this year. 

Many Democrats are already cranky about the abrupt interruption to their campaign and vacation schedule, wishing the House and Senate would have cut a deal weeks ago. But they don’t want to cross Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly.

“You will certainly have many vulnerable and front-line Dems really upset about coming back because the Senate told them to — when they feel they are already defending their seats because of Senate inaction over the last year and a half,” a top aide to a usually loyal House Democrat said in an e-mail to POLITICO.

House Agriculture Committee ChairmanCollin Peterson (D-Minn.) was more blunt in an interview with the Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul: “I don’t know how they’re going to pass it,” he said. “I haven’t really checked with people, but there are a lot of guys who aren’t going to vote for it.” 

If the Democrats are seriously scared to the point where saving several thousand police, firefighter and teacher jobs is politically a non-starter in the House, then they're done.  I mean that.  If they cannot pass this then they deserve the fate that voters have in store for them this fall.

This should be a no brainer.  And yet the Dems are running scared from trying to save teachers.

The GOP has to be laughing their heads off this morning at this Politico article, knowing they now live in an America where they can scare the Dems into doing anything.  Digby seems to think the plan to portray cops and teachers as evil union stooges and apparatchiks of the government machine will backfire like it did in California a few years ago.  I'm afraid she's overestimating the Democrats, and underestimating the sheer level of scapegoating hatred that the GOP can now gin up at will, unopposed by outfits like Politico that pass the GOP view on as gospel truth.

The Dems are in dire trouble if they fail here.  If $26 billion for cops is too risky to pass, then it's over for these idiots.