An orchestra of tiny violins play for Washington Post resident bow-tie-wearing-think-tank-dork-type Conservative worm Marc Thiessen in his woeful jeremiad titled ‘Manchin promised to back his ‘Republican friends.’ Instead, he betrayed them’:

“On Feb. 2, after 10 Senate Republicans went to the White House and offered President Biden a path to a bipartisan filibuster-proof covid relief bill, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) publicly backed their effort. Biden rebuffed an offer from Republicans to negotiate a compromise bill, and Senate Democrats jammed his $1.9 trillion spending plan down people’s throats on a party-line vote, using the budget reconciliation process that requires only a simple majority to pass. And Manchin provided the deciding vote that let them do it.”

“The lesson for conservatives is clear: Manchin is not going to save us. He’s from West Virginia, one of the reddest states in the country, so he needs to make a show of standing up to his party. But a show is all that it is. When Manchin announced he would oppose Biden’s nomination of Neera Tanden to run the Office of Management and Budget, some saw it as a sign of his willingness to buck his party. In fact, it was nothing more than political cover for his coming capitulation on his party’s $1.9 trillion miasma of special-interest spending. To provide further cover, Manchin voted (along with seven other Democrats) against an effort by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to eviscerate the Byrd rule and include a minimum-wage increase in the budget reconciliation bill. He voted for Sen. Rob Portman’s (R-Ohio) amendment to continue unemployment benefits at the current level (before flip-flopping and voting with the Democratic leadership to wipe out the very provision for which he had just voted). But in the end, he voted with his party to run roughshod over the Republican minority and pass one of the largest government spending bills in history on a partisan basis – exactly what he had promised not to do.”