Anatomy of the Bailout Breakdown - Time

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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1845657,00.html

Republicans and Democrats talked a lot over the last few days about putting aside their partisan differences for the good of the country to pass a financial markets rescue plan. But they mostly appeared to agree on one thing — that even if they were going to support it, no one much liked the $700 billion bailout bill they had negotiated with the Bush Administration, and certainly no one much wanted to take any credit for it.

So perhaps it shouldn't have come as such a shock when the House of Representatives failed to pass the bill Monday afternoon, or that the rest of the day was spent in partisan fury and recriminations: Democrats blamed Republicans, Republicans blamed the Dems, the House blamed the Senate, the Senate blamed the House, John McCain blamed Barack Obama, Barack Obama blamed — well, you get the picture. Only one player remained relatively restrained in the aftermath of the defeat, which led to a 777-point freefall for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the largest single point drop in history and a market loss of $1.2 trillion. "We're not going to play the finger-pointing blame game, which is what today devolved into," sniffed White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

The most obvious culprit in a legislative meltdown that many warn could take the economy down with it were House Republicans, who had gotten an earful from their constituents disapproving of the bailout and had been strongly against it from the start. After scuttling the first proposed deal last week at a contentious White House meeting, saying they simply didn't have the votes, House Republicans forced a renegotiation of the bill, moving it further to the right to make it more palatable to their members. Then after marathon talks over the weekend, an agreement was struck in the wee hours of Sunday morning, and the GOP House leadership quickly got behind the deal. "We are supporting this bill," House Minority Leader John Boehner told reporters Sunday night, adding he was asking members to vote for the measure

But the rank and file weren't necessarily ready to play follow the leader. Chasing Boehner and his deputies down the Cannon House Office Building's marble stairs, reporters asked if the party's top dogs believed they would get enough votes. They expected "substantial support," barked Rep. Roy Blunt, the second ranking House Republican, who represented the House GOP at the negotiations, as he hustled away.

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