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What Deal?

One narrative that escaped yesterday is that House Republicans were on board until McCain came to town and scuttled the deal.

(1) That doesn't exactly make sense. There's no such thing as scuttling a House Bill with Republican votes. If the Dems support the bailout, there's nothing House Republicans can do to stop them from passing it.

(2) It is completely contrary to everything else that we know about these wacky, partisan, and parochial House Republicans.

I give you, the the counter-narrative. Naturally, from the Weekly Standard.

On Wednesday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had explicitly called for McCain to use his influence as party leader to bring House Republicans along. "We need, now, the Republicans to start producing some votes for us," Reid said.

"We need the Republican nominee for president to let us know where he stands and what we should do." Reid explained that McCain was crucial to any deal because his approval of a deal would give congressional Republicans political cover necessary to sign on to a bipartisan agreement.

The second reason: House Republicans were never on board. Earlier this week, they gave Vice President Dick Cheney an earful about their opposition to the deal. Yesterday morning, a group of about 50 conservative House Republicans got together and when one speaker asked for a show of hands from those who support the bailout, less than a handful said they were likely to support it.

One staffer for a Republican in House leadership said: ?Understand one thing. House Republicans were never on board.?

Whatever you want to believe, just piece the facts together and create that narrative for yourself. It's pretty obvious that any credit or blame you want to assign can be assigned if you just put in the cognitive effort.

Full post as published by Expressio Unius on September 26, 2008 (boomark / email).