Thanks For Nothing

So the House just passed the Stimulus bill with ZERO Republican support. Now, I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh chide Obama by saying if he really thought the stimulus would work then he'd pass it with no GOP votes and then when it worked he'd take all the credit and effectively destroy the GOP forever. Well, looks like Rush may have called it right. Except on top of that, Obama will look good by very much out of his way to get some GOP support - includes tax cuts, offers to remove the Medicare contraceptive provision, etc. - and then gets zero votes for his effort. So, if the plan works, the Dems are going to get a boatload of credit. But, the big question is whether the plan really will work. The Republican's had some leglitimate gripes about the effectiveness of some of the programs (of course they'd probably want to include other less-effective measures like corporate tax cuts) and liberals think that not enough money is going to be spent fast enough (see post below) - so the jury really is out on this bill. One thing is certain however, and that's that Obama is going to own it. Even though the congressional dems are responsible for the bill, as long as Obama is backing it against all the republicans, he's going to be blamed or praised for the economy to come.

UPDATE: Philip Zelikow over at FP's Shadow Gov't (conservative blog) is pissed at the GOP for not offering an alternative to the stimulus - and offers some interesting ideas of his own.

UPDATE: Yglesias puts it thusly:

The lesson I would hope the administration learns here is this: He needs to spend less time seeking political cover to mitigate the downside to possible policy failure, and more time trying to implement the best policies he can.