Considering that the bill was beefed up to about 43% tax cuts (which is less of a percentage than the Republicans have in the house), he's been surprisingly bipartisan.
I would say a 7. The problem is that Republicans have been at a 2 on bipartisanship. They expect the Democrats to concede to everything they want. Ironically, I don't remember them being so kind when they gained a majority in both houses recently. But that's how politics is.
The stimulus debacle created one huge mess. The Republicans in Congress are pretty much the most conservative Republicans out there (excepting a healthy number in the Senate who are much more reasonable) since they are in safe districts that were able to withstand the reckonings of 2006 and 2008. So in many ways the party is more extreme than it used to be since its been shrunken down to the parts of the country where people would vote for a registered sex offender if he has an (R) next to his name.
Republicans have certainly (or at least they think they have) benefited from this situation in the short term. I really don't see their exit strategy though that will allow them to gain the upper hand unless they really start changing their party identity. Their party approval rating is still in 20's while Democrats in Congress are at least in the high 30's.
So essentially I see three things that might happen:
1) (what I see as the most likely) Obama will continue to approach things from a bipartisan perspective. Republicans will continue to revolt. If they continue to do so for too long, they risk being labeled as the opposition party who are just getting in the way for no good reason. Obama and Democrats will benefit if that happens. Obviously if Democrats start going out of control then it will be problematic for them too. But Obama really is the Democrats' ace of spades as he is pretty good at soothing the American people and finding his way out of sticky situations.
2) The GOP will stick to its guns and will criticize anything the President does. The Democratic brand will sink as a result. The public will not necessarily flock to Republicans either. Both parties will be stagnating at the bottom in terms of public opinion.
3) Republicans are able to broaden their message and are able to start rallying support for their causes. Frankly, I see this as the least likely considering that the people elected to office currently are about as conservative as they could be. I don't see them changing their hard-line stance on issues like immigration, the environment, national defense, and other issues which the middle of the country could go either way on. If anything, this stimulus debacle has probably made it even LESS likely that they will try to adopt any new approaches on issues.
Historically, the party with a person in the Oval Office loses seats in Congress during the midterm elections. There is a decent chance this will happen in the House. Republicans actually have more seats to defend in the
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
