It's Official: They Planned The Bailout To Fail

Remember how I posted earlier today that the Democrats' actions on the bailout seemed suspicious? That has now been confirmed by Jake Tapper at ABC (emphasis mine):

Yes, House Republicans didn't deliver many votes and 66% of them voted against the bill.

But considering that only a dozen votes needed to switch in order to provide a different outcome, and 95 Democrats in the House voted against it, critics are now wondering why couldn't House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have assured a different outcome considering how important she said its passage was?

Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., told me yesterday that he felt no pressure at all to vote for the bill.

Politically Drunk on Power also adds this (emphasis mine):

Pelosi and current leadership planned on utilizing this bill to both protect the party against accusations that they were doing nothing, while requiring enough Republican support to target Republicans who went against their constituency and voted for the bill. As Fox News and NBC both reported early this morning, Pelosi approached the freshman members of the Democratic Caucus and some 16 Democrats involved in contentious races and specifically told them that there would be no repercussion if they were to vote against party leadership and vote no to the bailout package. Although Pelosi did not specifically tell them to vote no to protect their re-election bids, the fact that she purposely told them there were no political repercussions to voting against the party could be considered nothing less than a clear message to protect their own asses. Ironically, nearly every Freshman Democrat and Democratic Representative involved in close congressional races voted against the bill. In addition, Pelosi failed to apply any pressure or threaten Democratic Committee Chairs who were opposing the bill. Committee Chairs Conyers, Filner, Thompson, Green and Peterson all voted against the rest of Democratic Leadership.

Democrats have claimed that many of these 95 saw the wave of Republicans voting no and fearful of their own re-election chances, followed suit. Yet, couldn't the same argument be made in reverse. If Republicans saw that over 40% of Democrats were casting "No" votes, the writing on the wall that Democrats would utilize this vote for political fire would be clear. There are only 2 excuses that Democratic leadership can provide for the failure of this bill. Either they must admit that as leaders, "the buck stops here", and they rushed this vote and failed within their own MAJORITY party; or they must admit that they irresponsibly politicized and purposely failed to pressure their own party members to further the parties political power.

In either case, Pelosi should resign from her leadership position for a clear failure to lead during a period of crisis and failure to deliver on a single campaign promise from her parties platform 2 years ago. In addition, new Democratic Leadership working with Republican Leadership should immediately remove every single member of the Senate Banking Committee and House Finance Committee and install new committee leadership.

[I'll post the actual links if/when I find them.]

I agree with Politically Drunk. The main thing I want to re-emphasize here is that this episode clearly shows that the Democrats are far more interested in scoring a political strike than in actually performing their duties and protecting the American economy.

This is why this has been the worst Congress in history, not only in terms of approval ratings, but also in terms of accomplishment. When the main objective is simply the acquisition and retaining of power, the American people get screwed.

That's what the Democrats do.

There's my two cents.