This is playing out in real time with President Obama going down to Congress this week to speak with House Repubs. Interesting, because he needs not one single vote from them. However, it made great TV. The storyline is being set of how much President Obama is reaching out and how the House Repubs. are falling back to the same old politics as usual. Which may play well with their individual constituents. This will probably not play out so well nationwide. The resulting anti republican sentiment may well have the effect of putting even more pressure on the moderate republicans to play along.
Nate over at 538.com has put together a quick graph showing which Republicans are voting with and against President Obama.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/01/fili-buster-watch.html
This is the playing out of the thoughts I put forward back when the Democrats voted to allow Lieberman to keep his chairmanship.
http://mysteryj.blogspot.com/2008/11/liebermans-demo-what.html
Pres. Elect Obama has a wide number of issues he wants to address and will need the broadest pool of support possible to draw from. Therefore, I believe the Lieberman vote was a result of signals sent from Obama's team. It was not about keeping that one vote in the Democratic fold. It was about sending signals to a broad spectrum of moderates in the Senate. The message is that there are going to be times that you may have to disagree with me for personal or political reasons. That's okay. We are going to need you and your leadership on the areas that we do agree on. It signals to Republicans that tend to agree with him on certain issues that they will not be used as a political pawns.It is not his intent to govern as Bush has for the past 8 years. Get in line or else. This administration will not be solely about loyalty and discipline. It will be about coalion building and governing. That is change the left should be able to get behind.
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