It's not simply about making the Obama administration look bad. Many Republicans actually
love economic recessions. No better means of disciplining the labor force has ever been devised.

That's the real message behind the GOP's Senate filibuster denying extended federal benefits to
roughly a million long-term unemployed. The same bill, which failed 57-41, would also have provided
$16 billion in Medicaid help to states overburdened by declining tax revenues.

In consequence, several hundred thousand cops, teachers, firefighters and other public employees
are sure to be laid off due to state budget cuts. Fat lot of good that will do the economy. But working
stiffs will be keeping their heads down, won't they?

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., whose state has the nation's second-highest unemployment rate (13.6 percent),
put it forcefully: "The Republicans in the Senate want this economy to fail. In cynical political terms ... they want
our country to fail to win an election, and they're willing to take the people of this country with them."

But that's only part of the story. One of the enduring mysteries of American life is how Republicans
keep succeeding by failing. The presidency of George W. Bush ought to have inoculated American voters
against GOP economic theories for a generation. Tax cuts for the wealthy led not to greater prosperity,
but runaway budget deficits, a doubled national debt and the weakest job creation since World War II.
See-no-evil financial deregulation damn near destroyed the world banking system.