Here’s a photo of Rep Mike Castle presenting a check of stimulus money to some constituents in Delaware:

But of course Castle also voted against the stimulus bill. The trick is he just doesn’t say where the money comes from. The President noted today that Castle’s hardly the only one running this play:

And then the last portion of it was infrastructure, which as I’ve said, a lot of you have gone to appear at ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against. Now I say all this not to re-litigate past, but it’s simply to state that the component parts of the stimulus are consistent with what many of you say are important things to do — rebuilding our infrastructure, tax cuts for families and businesses, and making sure that we were providing states and individuals some support when the roof was caving in.

Now Castle’s running around saying that Delaware deserves a larger share of the money that he voted against. But of course this is the problem when you make a strategic decision that everyone is going to oppose an administration initiative irrespective of its content. Castle, who is 100 percent of Delaware’s House delegation and has a moderate record over the years, could have bargained for a stimulus a bit more to his liking. But he chose to join with the hard-right and refuse to bargain.

Bruce Bartlett says that what Obama could learn from Reagan is about the need to break more decisively with his predecessors. Kevin Drum says “There’s a lot to this, though I’d add that Reagan also passed his signature domestic initiatives — big tax cuts and defense spending increases — and rallied his base by firing the air traffic controllers. Obama hasn’t done any of that.”

His view of what Obama’s doing wrong:

I’m a fan of Obama’s, but this has always been his big blind spot. He came to office convinced — sincerely, it seems — that he could change the tone of Washington DC. That was always a fantasy. The way to get things done is to make a case for them, build public support for them, blast your enemies for opposing them, and just generally fight like hell for them. It can be done with a smile, but it has to be done. Obama seems to have a hard time getting that.

But was any of this really the secret to Reagan’s success at driving his agenda? I doubt it. The Reagan Revolution of 1981 was built on the twin pillars of deficit financing and majority rule in the Senate. Reagan stuffed the politically difficult part of his agenda into the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981. Being nice like Obama doesn’t get your agenda enacted, but neither does fighting like hell for it. What gets your agenda enacted is having the votes to enact your agenda. Having an agenda that advances the interests of politically powerful interests helps. And needing 50 votes rather than 60 also helps. At the margin I’m sure that political gambits make some kind of difference, but it ultimately all comes down to the cold hard facts of vote counts and concrete, specific, objective political pressure.

Ben Nelson launched a gambit on health care that really would have been welcome back in June or July:

Today, Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson issued an invitation to Republican colleagues in the Senate to work with him to avert efforts to pass health reform legislation using the truncated reconciliation process.

“If Republican colleagues are serious about fixing our health care system and want to avoid using the reconciliation process, then I will go to the negotiating table with them,” Senator Nelson said. “If Republican senators join me at the table, we can use bipartisanship for health reform rather than use reconciliation, which needs only 50 votes to approve legislation.

“All it takes is one Republican to come forward, put partisanship aside, and work on behalf of those that do not have or cannot afford health insurance,” Nelson added. “Working together, we can fight to ensure health reform relies on our private market system, rather than the government to reduce the cost of health care and deliver better care for millions of Americans.

Ezra Klein reports that David Axelrod doesn’t seem to have a concrete plan to secure Republican votes for Obama initiatives. But Nelson is pointing the way forward here—it’s reconciliation.

Reconciliation, a process through which many legislative ideas can be moved with only 50 votes—is not just a way to circumvent Republican opposition, it’s actually a way to secure Republican cooperation. That’s because it’s a threat to the the interests of the most conservative Democrats, the Nelsons & Bayhs & Lincolns of the Senate, and brings the prospect of passing legislation that’s substantially more left-wing than what could pass with an “all Democrats plus one or two Republicans” strategy. On the other hand, it means progressives would have to settle for bills that are somewhat more limited in scope than what can be achieved through the regular order. This puts centrist Democrats in a position where they have the opportunity to genuinely broker deals. By cooperating, moderate Republicans can ensure that legislative initiatives become less liberal in exchange for progressives getting to do bills that have wide scope and a bipartisan seal of approval.

Once upon a time it seemed like this was the plan for health care. The reconciliation instructions were drawn up, even though everyone preferred to avoid reconciliation. But far too many Senators started immediately saying not that reconciliation was their second choice, but that it was just off the table. That doesn’t work. It’s better to avoid reconciliation, but it’s vital to say that reconciliation, rather than capitulation, is the fallback option. That creates incentives to cooperate.