Let us now praise five Republicans who are placing the country’s economic interests ahead of their party’s political interests. The list includes two governors, Charlie Crist of Florida and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, and three senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

All five have supported President Obama’s stimulus package, and all have offered explanations similar to the one that Crist delivered on “Meet the Press”: “There are times when you’re in a crisis, and we all need to work together to get through those times.”

He’s absolutely right, but in today’s Washington, working together is usually derided as a weak-kneed, fainthearted and hopelessly naive approach to politics. The forces of instant indignation and ideological purity are ready to leap in front of a cable-TV camera and denounce anyone who dares speak words like compromise or accommodation.

Just a few months ago, Barack Obama was campaigning on the promise to change the way Washington works. The voters gave him a decisive victory, yet many Republicans are acting as if the election never happened.

Not a single House Republican voted for the president’s economic program and in the Senate, only Snowe, Collins and Specter crossed party lines to support him. The GOP’s calculation is as clear as it is cynical: They’re betting, even hoping, that Obama will fail. Then they can run in 2010 on the slogan: “It’s their fault. Vote Republican.”

That’s a big gamble. As Collins insists, “People don’t want us to be the party that says no, just no.” And the latest polls back her up. Seventy-nine percent told the New York Times/CBS survey that Republicans should be “working in a bipartisan way,” while only 17 percent said “sticking to Republican policies” should be their top priority.

In the ABC News/Washington Post poll, Obama’s approval rating is 68 percent, Congressional Democrats get 50 percent, while the Republicans are at 38 percent. Voters prefer Democrats by 26 points to handle the country’s “main problems”; in party identification, they hold a 12-point lead.

So why do the Republicans insist on being “the party that says no”? For one thing, their moderate wing has virtually disappeared. There’s not a single Republican left in the House from New England and only three from New York. Obama might reach out his hand but few are willing to take it.

Tom Davis, recently retired as a Republican Congressman from Virginia, explains: “The Republican caucus has shifted. Basically, it has become more conservative and shrunk over time. Actually, I like to say that it’s shrunk from a political party, which is a coalition, into a club where everybody agrees with each other.”