Ramesh Ponnuru, responding to a reader.

[randomness]

From http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTE1NmM2MDU1MjNiM2FkZDhjNThiNDgwMTQ1OTk0YWE=:

The bailout was atrocious, and the responsible thing to do was to vote against it. Its defeat is a victory for liberty.

Anyway, the Republicans delivered plenty of votes. They're not in charge of running the House. The Democrats are. If you want to blame anybody, blame them.

Thanks for your note, which is representative of quite a few I have gotten. It seems to me, though, that your two points are in some tension with each other. You can say the bill was terrible and applaud conservatives for killing it, or say that it should have passed and that it's the Democrats' fault it didn't—but putting these two positions in a blender is odd.

Comments

[julianyap.livejournal.com]

Well, not if you're a conservative pundit, because then you've set up a situation where you can blame the Democrats for anything that goes badly, but praise conservatives for anything that goes well.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Ramesh Ponnuru is a conservative pundit, and he still finds that odd.

[julianyap.livejournal.com]

Ah, I had misread your post, I thought the text above was Ramesh and the text below was you.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Alas, the National Review doesn't allow me to post. :)

(Seriously, I can see how the excerpt may not have been clear.)

But, but it fits!

[luagha.livejournal.com]

If the Democrats wanted to pass a bill in the House, they could and the Republicans could not stop them. They control the floor and they have a seated majority - a party line vote always wins for them.

But the bill is unpopular and many Democrats are going into a re-election and they would consider it suicide to be seen as voting for this bill when the telephone calls coming in from their constituents are 50-50 between 'No' and 'Hell, no!'. So they wanted at least 100 Republicans to come on board and vote with them.

When voting time came, 95 Democrats also voted 'No' because they didn't want to risk it. Why didn't they want to risk it when it was their bill?

Re: But, but it fits!

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Political calculations can be logically incoherent, sure. Moreover, I think it's pretty clear both leaderships screwed up on Monday--something which won't happen again, I predict--by playing political games instead of keeping their eye on the ball. I'm ascribing this to incompetence rather than malice.

Ponnuru's original point stands. Arguing both sides at once is inconsistent.