Senator Bob Corker (R - Tennessee) has just announced that he is going to cross the aisle in order to vote for new financial regulation reform, the big pillars of which most Congressmen agree; end too big to fail, can't use FDIC protected money for hedge fund like activity, and the like. Senator Corker and Senator Dodd (D - Connecticut) have been meeting behind closed doors for months working out a bi-partisan deal on Financial Regulatory reform. And apparently, Senator Corker has said that the Republican Leadership strategy to leave those discussions has not been conducive to productive deal-making on an issue most Americans want to see pass.
Corker said Republicans lost their leverage when they failed to rally around the emerging deal on which he and Dodd were working until several weeks ago. Corker suggested that the lack of enthusiasm from his colleagues about those talks played into Dodd’s decision to cut short his work with Corker and move a bill to committee.
"Had everybody come together around that bipartisan negotiation, and I think had Chris [Dodd] seen that other Republicans would actually join in at that time, he might have continued on. But I think the fact that didn't occur ... the die was cast," Corker said.The United States is a democratic representative republic, which means that we elect people who represent our rough values, but who may make judgments different than ours on specific issues. Because the electorate is so polarized at the moment, it's hard to work on pragmatic reform and yes compromise in public view as voters on both the right and left will then either fail to donate or to vote for their representative "for giving in to the other side."
To read Victoria Crane's Politico story behind the scenes of the defection click here.
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