Killing The Stimulus

Kristol looks at a new poll that shows a plurality of Americans against the stimulus. He licks his lips:

I now think, for the first time, there’s an outside possibility the plan as presently constructed could collapse--allowing for passage in late February or early March of something far more like the GOP alternative of tax cuts and some targeted spending.

Dave Weigel thinks Kristol is overplaying his hand. Kristol is a pure partisan: there is never any over-playing of his hand, even if it reveals cynicism of a pretty fathomless kind. Kristol's goal is the maximization of Republican power in the next news cycle. That's all. And if the economy melts down because the stimulus doesn't work in the long run, it will be the Democrats' fault. And that will be his spin in that news cycle then.

You can't shame someone who has had his sense of shame surgically removed. I mean: he picked Palin.