If President Obama can justifiably claim a string of major legislative victories in behalf of the American consumer public, congressional Republicans can only claim they did their best, unsuccessfully, to defend shamelessly mean-spirited politics aimed at sabotaging the common sense Obama agenda.
In rapid succession, the president's financial reform and unemployment compensation extension bills made it through thickets of GOP obstacles.
Idaho's Republican Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch offered lame reasons for their votes opposing new Wall Street regulations. They both issued press releases that amounted to techno gobbledygook to explain their opposition to arming the executive branch with new regulatory powers over financial institutions.
As for emergency aid to 2.5 million jobless Americans, Crapo and Risch place the deficit above helping desperate, jobless workers in their hours of urgent need.
A certain heartlessness is required of Republicans who opposed both the Wall Street reforms and extending unemployment compensation for as many as 99 weeks at a cost of $33 billion.
Some of them established a new low in human indifference to suffering with cruel charges that jobless aid discourages the unemployed from seeking work (Arizona's Sen. Jon Kyl) and people who've lost jobs have been "spoiled" by aid (Nevada GOP senate candidate Sharron Angle).
Virtually all Americans take pride in working. Unemployment brought on by an economic meltdown triggered by Wall Street machinations is a source of pain and personal humiliation for the jobless.
Those voting against financial reform and emergency jobless aid apparently were blind to the connection. Protections against another Wall Street-engineered economic collapse were utterly necessary to prevent an epidemic of layoffs that inevitably required the extended unemployment benefits.
Today's unemployed are victims of lax Republican policing of Wall Street, where the machinery for an economic calamity was assembled, gimmick by gimmick. The millions whose jobs vanished were thrust into nightmares of debt, home foreclosures, household food shortages, cancelled college studies and abandoned health care.
To this, Republicans responded, "Tough."
Congress at least seven times has extended jobless benefits without much fuss, realizing that families without income need food, a place to live and health care.
This time around, however, Republican senators including Mike Crapo and Jim Risch had no compunction about voting "No" on emergency aid for the desperately needy. Today's GOP opposes anything proposed by President Obama, even when human survival is at stake.
Can conservative politics get any more callous?
