House pubbies to a man refuse Oinkbama pork bill

Yesterday, just eight days after the inauguration, President Obama had his £576bn so-called stimulus bill passed by the House of Representatives - but without a single vote from any Republican.

All 177 House Republicans opposed the bill. None of them fell for that 'bi-partisan' tripe, which is Democrat code for 'do it our way.'

Which gives me hope for the Republican Congressmen. Forget about 'change.' They know an old-style, Democrat pork-barrel piece of legislation - that is, a Bill designed to pay off or buy votes from vested interests - when they see one, and they aren't going to back it.

Congressman Eric Cantor, one of the leading House Republicans, says an analysis of the Bill shows it is mostly pork: just 12 cents of every dollar in the spending will go to any genuine economic stimulus, such as creating jobs.

Yet Obama was keen to have support from the Republicans. He didn't get it, because what he really wanted was submission from the Republicans.

Clearly the Republicans on the Hill don't reckon they are going to get any backlash from the voters in their districts because they have given a No to The One. They understand that already their voters don't like what Obama is doing, or indeed the arrogance with which he is doing it.

Just two days after the inauguration, when Republican legislators told the president they objected to the massive spending bill, Obama dismissed them with two words: 'I won.'

That was a particularly stupid mistake by the new president. Hard-left Democrats may cheer at such gloating, but most Americans don't like that kind of contempt being shown to Congress.

Indeed, as the American website Politico points out, with those two words 'Obama brought the curtain down on the 48-hour era of bipartisanship.' He liberated the Republicans from any mainstream media pressure to offer support to Democrat policies. He dismissed 'bi-partisanship,' so why shouldn't they?

The big spending and the big arrogance are why Obama's support is already falling. During the transition from the Bush administration to the new administration - that is, during the weeks in which Obama kept near-quiet and had to do nothing - his ratings in the Gallup opinion poll were 83 percent. After just three days in office, Gallup showed his support had already dropped by 15 points to 68 percent.

As any economist will tell you, what is important in a statistic is not the number, it's the trend. In this case, the trend is down, and fast. Americans are already having buyer's regret about their new president.

Then of course there is his naiveté in foreign policy. A few days ago he gave an embarrassingly-wet interview on Arab-owned television and offered unconditional talks to Iran.

Iranian president Ahmadinejad replied, as one knew he would, with a fierce demand that he wouldn't talk to Obama until the Americans had issued an apology - ie, grovelled - for unspecified 'crimes' and had withdrawn all their troops from all other countries.

(Note: some countries in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait actually want the American forces there. I don't. But then, I alas am not the king of Saudi Arabia nor one of the ruling al-Sabahs of Kuwait. And judging by my brief time with one of the al-Sabahs, more the pity for Kuwait.)

And there is Obama's naiveté about Islamic terrorists. He wants to close the prison at Guantanamo.

Fine by me. But he has made that his policy without first figuring out where he is going to put the 245 remaining inmates, some of whom are undoubtedly keen to get back to the job of mass-murdering.

Two men already released from Gitmo turned up six days ago on a video posted on a jihadist website. A US counter-terrorism official told AFP news service that one of them is a Saudi man called Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri who on his release was taken into the senior ranks of Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

If he or any of the other 245 turns up as part of another jihadist atrocity, the new president is going to have to have more to say than, 'Gosh, whoops.'

And he is going to have to find another job after 2012. By that time, Americans will be looking for change they can believe in.