I'm starting to see a certain amount of elegance in Obama's approach on this stimulus bill. He seriously courted the votes of Republicans and he and the House made a lot of concessions as a part of that effort. Not one Republican voted for the bill. This accomplishes two things. One, people can see that Obama did make the effort, and he didn't try to ram the bill down the throats of Republicans without making any compromises, and two, now that the Republicans have shown that they won't vote for it anyway, Democrats are free to change it to be more to their liking before passing it.