Probably nothing speaks to the sorry state of the Republican Party than the fact that Idaho's Walter Minnick might be the smartest Republican in Congress.

    Idaho's Walter Minnick (Democrat, Idaho) was just one of eleven Democrats who joined all House Republicans in voting against the so-called economic stimulus package. Among other things, he argued that there was too little actual stimulus in the bill. And in fact, very little of the money will be spent before the recession is predicted to end on its own. The cash spigots really start flowing in 2010, which just happens to be an election year. What the Democrats are really trying to stimulate is the perpetuation of one party rule. The truth is that this bill is really nothing more than an enormous payoff to Democrat special interest groups. That's why the Democrats were trying to configure the bill to divert cash to African-Americans and away from "white male construction workers." Too many of those hardhat wearing construction workers think like Joe the plumber. Democrats did exactly the same thing on a much smaller scale in 1993 when Bill Clinton proposed a stimulus plan for an economy that had been growing for nearly a year after a very brief and mild recession.

    What Walter Minnick did is what Republicans should have done. He didn't just whine about the current bill. He offered a reasonable alternative to the Pelosi-Reid-Obama boondoggle. In this fearful environment nurtured by Obama and the news media, doing nothing is not going to sell. And since Republicans seem to lack the imagination to come up with something on their own, they should have gotten onboard with Minnick. Minnick's bill is much, much smaller and is frontloaded so that it might influence the economy. It actually spends more money this year than the Obama boondoggle. In addition, Minnick's proposal has a trigger that will shut down spending should the economy show signs of growth.

    Does this means that Walter Minnick wants Obama to fail? No. It means that he wants America to succeed, just like Rush Limbaugh.

    Senate Republicans have been nibbling around the edges of the stimulus package, trying to make the bill less unpalatable. Even so, they have not managed to trim billions of dollars destined for ACORN, an organization known to most Americans for committing serial voter registration fraud. The bill still contains hundreds of millions of dollars for the purchase of electric golf carts.

Would anyone care to bet with me on whether the manufacturer of those golf carts donates heavily to Democrats?

The bill even contains a provision to preserve the habitat of the salt marsh harvest mouse. Does anyone really believe that a mouse is essential to our economic health?

    There is no shortage of provisions to oppose in this bill. But in this environment, it isn't enough to simply be against something. Whining that it's too expensive isn't going to seize the momentum from the Democrats. And honestly, the Republican strategy of trying to fix the current package is worse than trying to apply lipstick to a pig. This is trying to gussie up the pig's manure. That's probably why the Democrats are breaking another promise and are planning to pass this bill before the public gets a look at it. They had promised to post the whole thing on the web for 48 hours before voting on it. Now the Congress is being asked to vote on it without its members even getting a look at it.

    Not only is this stimulus not needed. It's probably harmful. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts that the recession will end later this year if the Congress does nothing. Further the CBO predicts that passage of the stimulus package will inflict considerable long-term economic harm to the US economy. And further, the CBO projects that the true cost of this generational theft act is quadruple the $800 billion that Democrats admit to. That's probably why stock markets here and abroad sagged so dramatically once the final package was announced Wednesday.

Back in the olden days Congressional Budget Office reports were treated as holy manna by Democrats and the mainstream news media, especially when they contradicted the sitting president. But the old days expired about 25 days ago, when Barack Obama took the oath of office.

So, the Republicans can't expect the news media to rescue them. And, they're incapable of helping themselves. Maybe they should adopt Walter Minnick as their guiding light.

Update: Will the stimulus help? Economists say no.

  "I think (doing) nothing would have been better," said Ed Yardeni, an investment analyst who's usually an optimist, in an interview with McClatchy. He argued that the plan fails to provide the right incentives to spur spending.

"It's unfocused. That is my problem. It is a lot of money for a lot of nickel-and- dime programs. I would have rather had a lot of money for (promoting purchase of) housing and autos . . . . Most of this plan is really, I think, aimed at stabilizing the situation and helping people get through the recession, rather than getting us out of the recession. They are actually providing less short-term stimulus by cutting back, from what I understand, some of the tax credits."