Department of "Huh?!": Obama Election Season Edition

Outsourced to Jackie Calmes, who wonders whether the Democratic establishment is insane:

On Economy, Democrats Face a Lack of Unity: Mr. Obama spoke Thursday with the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to coordinate on proposals.... Among the ideas favored within the administration are tax incentives for clean energy jobs and credits for employers who increase their work forces. The president and his team have ruled out a broad-based payroll tax holiday to promote hiring, officials say. But they are still considering whether to propose making permanent a tax credit for businesses’ research and development; for three decades the costly credit has been repeatedly renewed rather than made permanent so the revenue loss does not show up in deficit projections.

Democrats say the list of stimulus ideas is mostly tax cuts because spending proposals would have no chance of Republican support.

Yet Republicans have opposed Democrats’ tax cutting ideas as well, so some Democrats argue that the new ideas could further demoralize party liberals, who want new spending for job-creating public works...

To put forward a weak, ineffective, Republican idea for further stimulus that then does not pass seems the worst of all possible worlds.