SAN FRANCISCO AND WASHINGTON — Donald Manzullo, a House Republican from Illinois, has proposed a $5,000 voucher for anyone buying a new car. Kentucky's Mitch McConnell, the Senate GOP leader, favors a temporary suspension of the payroll tax. Jim DeMint, a Republican senator from South Carolina, wants to permanently cut the federal income tax.
As Republicans fight President Obama's gargantuan economic plan, they have plenty of ideas. What they don't have is a party-wide consensus: They can't agree among themselves on the best alternative, or on whether government action is even needed to pull the economy from its nose dive.
The House passed an $819-billion version of the stimulus bill Wednesday without a single Republican voting in favor. Still, Obama and fellow Democrats hope for at least some GOP support in the Senate, where a more collaborative -- and expensive -- bill is taking shape. Many Republican governors, meanwhile, have already begun calculating how to spend their share of any federal bailout.
"There is not a coherent Republican message at this moment," conceded lobbyist Vin Weber, a former GOP House member.
The party's scattershot stance points up two problems facing Republicans after their dismal showing in November's election: Absent a central figure like the president, who speaks for Republicans? And with its image in tatters, how does the GOP oppose Obama without seeming heedlessly partisan, or ignoring the voters' desire for quick action to ease the economic hurt?
For all their uncertainty, many Republicans agree on one thing. "They understand that Obama is enormously popular and resisting him is very dangerous," Weber said.
Where lawmakers stand depends greatly on where they sit.
House Republicans, who face voters every two years, typically represent compact, ideologically cohesive and mostly conservative districts. Senators, whose terms run for six years, are chosen by a much larger electorate and have to weigh a broader set of concerns. That would explain why many Senate Republicans, while expressing concerns about the size of the stimulus package and its ratio of tax cuts to spending, have been more receptive to compromising with Obama than House Republicans.
For their part, the nation's governors -- who live much closer to their constituents -- have to make practical decisions that members of Congress don't; virtually all states, for instance, have laws requiring a balanced budget. But even so, Republican governors are no more unified than the GOP on Capitol Hill.
