Reform = "bail-out!"

Felix Soloman seems perplexed about modern American politics and the GOP in particular.

I also wonder about the implicit 60-vote supermajority which Dodd seems to think he needs to get anything passed: is that strictly necessary? Are there really Republicans who would stick their neck out and filibuster a financial-reform bill aimed at reigning in Wall Street? Voting against it is one thing, but killing it with a filibuster is surely not a vote-winner anywhere in the US right now. Certainly the rhetoric coming from the likes of Gregg doesn’t suggest to me that the Republicans are in any way philosophically opposed to any bill along these lines being passed.

My emphasis, but the spelling is his.

Yes, yes there really are Republicans who would not hesitate filibustering a financial reform bill.

• "Reform" is now a word the tea partiers populists in the base associate with "Obama overreach" and, as the video Solomon himself points to, bank bailouts
  
• A voter who goes to the polls remembering a filibuster that sent a bill off to obscurity eight months earlier is a rare voter indeed; obstruction is rarely punished, at least not when it's done by Republicans
  
• Republicans have no incentive -- none -- to get this thing passed; better for them the Senate does nothing, and, anyway they know who butters their bread
  
• Rhetoric from Judd Gregg is...how shall I put it...meaningless

That's why Dodd's seeming plan to strip consumer protection from the financial reform bill would be a mistake. As with health care, even when Republican ideas are incorporated into a bill, that's no guarantee that any Republican will support a bill that's also supported by the majority of the...er...majority. Even if obstruction rarely comes back to haunt them, forcing them to filibuster would have some positive outcomes, not least of which is making clear that the GOP does not want to rein in the institutions that nearly destroyed the world's economy.