The stimulus bill beat the filibuster last night. But just barely. 61 votes. A near-death experience. Late yesterday, you heard some talk, including from Ben Nelson, that the vote might be a bit more bipartisan than expected. Six Republicans, we were assured, had been present at the centrist negotiations last week. But it was just talk.. Democrats joined with Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe to secure cloture. Judd Gregg and Jon Cornyn didn't vote. Literally every other Republican voted to sustain the filibuster. Fiscal conservatives like Lamar Alexander and Bob Bennett voted to filibuster. Social conservatives like Sam Brownback and Jon Kyl voted to filibuster. Self-styled moderates like John McCain and George Voinovich voted to filibuster. The Republican Party can't agree on much, but last night, they agreed to filibuster. They agreed on that. At yesterday's press conference, Chip Reid asked a strange question. "You have often said that bipartisanship is extraordinarily important, overall and in this stimulus package, but now, when we ask your advisers about the lack of bipartisanship so far -- zero votes in the House, three in the Senate -- they say, 'Well, it's not the number of votes that matters; it's the number of jobs that will be created.'" "Is that a sign that you are moving away -- your White House is moving away from this emphasis on bipartisanship?" Washington needs a working theory of bipartisanship. At the moment, it doesn't have one. Analysis of bipartisanship works backwards from votes rather than forward from process. If the final vote is not bipartisan, then the process is assumed to not have been bipartisan, and since the president controls much of the process, the president is assumed not to be bipartisan. It's like presuming a high schooler uninterested in drinking beer because the liquor store wouldn't sell to him.
