'Repercussions' for Corker 'unpleasant' for Americans

The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog reports that Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee is working with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., on financial oversight regulation. According to Washington Wire writer Michael Crittenden, Corker says he's willing to be the sole Republican to vote for a compromise if it comes to that, and says flatly he knows "there are going to be repercussions” for his efforts at bipartisanship.

Corker, who opposes a financial consumer protection agency but has suggested a Senate-confirmed advocate for financial consumers as a compromise, should be commended for his outreach on this issue. And yet, after any number of positions for which he should face the repercussions of voters - Corker champions lower pay and fewer benefits for working Americans and has gone so far as to press for the contemptuous violation of workers' contracts - an effort to protect American consumers from private transnationalist bureaucracies leaves him describing his relations with his own party on the matter as "unpleasant" and "awkward."