D.C.'s Famous Pander Bears: No Longer Popular

It's probably too early to figure out the politics of all this, but given the bill's vast unpopularity, and the pressure that put on the House of Representatives, I think we can state without fear of contradiction that Tim Cavanaugh nailed this between the eyes in his August/September magazine column:

In a political season simply oozing hope, change, and historical firsts, here's something that might actually be encouraging: a widening gulf between promised election-year giveaways and the expressed desires of the populace on the receiving end. Has shameless political pandering become one more item on the long list of services Washington can't deliver?

Specific to the housing-finance crisis, Cavanaugh, noted,

Americans never wanted a mortgage bailout of any kind. In March Rasmussen found that Americans opposed bailing out homeowners by nearly a 2-to-1 margin (53 percent to 29 percent), and were even more strongly opposed to bailouts for lenders. […] In May, during consideration of a mortgage-rescue bill sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told the L.A. Times that his constituent mail was running "50 to 1: 'Don't bail these people out.'"

Is McCarthy just another aloof Republican? For his sake I hope not: His district, Bakersfield, ranks eighth nationwide in the number of foreclosure filings per household, according to the foreclosure-tracking company RealtyTrac. Now this great country is not lacking in areas that have been designated "foreclosure epicenters." Yet even in Bakersfield, which may actually deserve that title, bailout supporters are as rare as hens' teeth. So who is for this thing?

That would be, first, the media[.]

Read the whole thing here.