McCain says Obama needs to work on bipartisanship

[Terminator]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator John McCain said on Friday that President Barack Obama should include Republicans in his plans sooner if he really wants their support after the bitter debate over the $787 billion economic stimulus bill.
McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, and other Republicans complained they had been left out of negotiations on the legislation by Democrats who hold majorities in both houses of Congress.
McCain said the bill was filled with non-emergency spending paid for with borrowed money that future generations will have to pay back.
"I think that the majority of people understand that this was generational theft," McCain told Reuters.
The Arizona senator said many other issues coming up will require a bipartisan effort that he said has been lacking so far from Obama and the Democrats.
"I hope they've learned a lesson," he said. "I hope that they will reverse course, and sit down, negotiate from the beginning, so you're in on the takeoff, so you can be in on the landing."
McCain met Obama two weeks after the November 4 election and agreed that "Americans of all parties want and need their leaders to come together and change the bad habits of Washington" to solve urgent challenges.
Obama initially hoped for an overwhelming majority for passage of the stimulus bill, but the debate quickly dissolved into the traditional argument in which Democrats backed a package more weighted to spending programs and Republicans advocated tax cuts.
Acknowledging scaled-down ambitions for the vote, Obama on Thursday said "I hope they act in a bipartisan fashion, but no matter how they act," the legislation should help the economy.
The stimulus bill ultimately passed the House of Representatives with no Republican support. It was expected to garner the votes of three Republican moderates in the Senate.
"No one could view this as having a scintilla of bipartisanship," said McCain, who has often annoyed his own Republican colleagues by working with the opposition party.
"The message of the election was, sit down and work together. They obviously are not doing that," he said.

[Rhino]

Well that's definately one for the "No sh*t" category.

You know it's bad when RINO McCain says you need to work on bipartisanship. That's like Keith Richards telling you that you have a drug problem.

[Xiphos]

One of my biggest gripes about the Bush Administration and the GOP was their willingness to lay down conservative principles to get along with the Democrats. Having someone like Ted Kennedy help craft government policy and spending in schools is a good example. The GOP kept reaching across the aisle and getting stabbed in the back for it. It was very frustrating. You won the election, act like it and do what you were elected to do. They didn't and lost power.

It would be hypocritical of me to expect the Dems to set aside their lunatic beliefs after they won to work with the GOP and institute conservative policies. They won the election and they don't need to work with anyone else. They don't and it's one of the strong points of their party. I wish the GOP was more ruthless when dealing with their political rivals.

The Democrats are in power and can do whatever they want with legislation. (I'm not going to pretend that anything Congress does has been constitutional for a long time.)

It will be up to us in two and four years if we want more of this.

[Terminator]

Whether you're republican or not, it's a no-brainer that moving away from there principles and beliefs was a bad move.