The GOP's "Political Games"

Yesterday, Sen. Judd Gregg's (R-NH) dubious effort to create a bipartisan deficit commission was rejected by the Senate.  Or, more accurately, the chamber voted 53-46 in favor of the initiative, falling seven votes short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster. 

Ironically, seven Republican senators who had co-sponsored the legislation ended up not voting for it.  Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK) was absent, but the other six -- Sens. Sam Brownback (KS), Mike Crapo (ID), John Ensign (NV), Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX), and John McCain (AZ) -- all voted to block the measure.   

Responding to the vote, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), a supporter of the commission, blasted his party and implied that they're playing "political games" to win elections instead of working earnestly to solve problems:

I think that for the Republican Party, one of the important things - first of all, from a substantive view, we have to get on with this. I think that if the public perceives that the Republican Party is playing political games and putting covering people's hides and whose main goal in life is to see how many more Republicans we can get in the Senate and the House, and the public interest be damned because this is the theory that we're going to create an environment that's going to be better - I think it's going to backfire. I think the American people move to the independents. They're looking for forthrightness, they're looking for transparency here. They're looking for us to deal with problems, and they've made it pretty darn clear they want us to do it on a bipartisan basis.

Indeed, it won't be easy for the six Republican senators to explain their "no" votes.  According to Politico, Brownback and McCain retracted their support because they were worried the commission might lead to tax increases (which are, after all, one way of raising revenues and lowering deficits).  Or maybe they simply balked after President Obama voiced support for the idea.

At any rate, this isn't the first time in the past year that congressional Republicans disavowed their own ideas.  Most notably, several GOP senators tried to kill health reform by voting to declare an individual mandate unconstitutional, even though they had supported the mandate in the past.  Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) actually claimed there was "a bipartisan consensus to have mandates" last June -- six months before he cast his vote affirming that such a "consensus" would violate the Constitution. 

Yet, despite all the evidence of political games, GOP leaders are still insisting that they're "ready and willing" to work with President Obama and the majority, as long as the Democrats are willing to fully embrace conservative proposals.  At this point, though, why would anyone trust the Republicans to support their own ideas?