No judgments

This morning I'm trying to get inside the heads of Obama and his advisers to figure out why they're telling the press that as much as 40 percent of the economic stimulus package could come in the form of tax cuts. Everyone, including me, is surprised. Josh Marshall doesn't like the look of things. Neither does Paul Krugman. Ezra Klein is growing weary of tax cuts as a response to every kind of economic situation. And Matt Yglesias thinks Obama is setting himself up for failure by opening negotiations from a place of weakness.

Yglesias might be right, and so might Marshall, Krugman, and Klein. But Obama won't be our president for another two weeks, and at this point we know very little about what the final package might look like. For the moment, I'm reserving judgment (while reserving the right to get angry later).

It does seem to me that Krugman is wrong about one thing. He argues that Republicans won't get behind the stimulus package no matter what, but I'm not sure that's right. Some Republicans won't. That's true. But moderate Republican Senators like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and George Voinovich might be persuaded to come aboard. No group is monolithic, even Republicans, and no one wants to be remembered as another Hoover.