John Aravois of Americablog is reporting that the conservative caucus of Blue Dog Democrats is preparing to sell out their fellow Democrats in the House of Representatives by voting today to give Bush everything he wants regarding the Iraq supplemental funding bill:
I just heard from an impeccable source that there is serious concern on the Hill that conservative Democrats in the House will vote with the Republicans to strip any and all restrictions from the Iraq supplemental tomorrow, effectively giving Bush all the money he wants with no restrictions and no effort to hold either him or the Iraq government accountable for anything. I.e., they will vote to continue this war along the same disastrous course because they’re too afraid to challenge George Bush and his failed leadership.
Let me reiterate: This isn’t some idle rumor. The concerns are coming from Hill sources themselves.
I don’t have any idea who John’s source is on this, and he’s not talking, but I can only assume it’s someone who wants the netroots to put pressure on these back-stabbing, back-sliding Democrats and put a stop to their plan to abandon their own leadership in the House. I’m willing to trust that his source is telling the truth.
So who are these traitorous Dems (hint: one of them is Patrick Murphy, a freshman rep from Pennsylvania that this community supported and helped get elected.)? Here’s the list of Blue Dog Democrats (via Wikipedia):
(cont.
* Mike Arcuri (New York)
* Joe Baca (California)
* John Barrow (Georgia)
* Melissa Bean (Illinois)
* Marion Berry (Arkansas)
* Sanford Bishop (Georgia)
* Dan Boren (Oklahoma)
* Leonard Boswell (Iowa)
* Allen Boyd (Florida)
* Dennis Cardoza (California)
* Ben Chandler (Kentucky)
* Jim Cooper (Tennessee)
* Jim Costa (California)
* Bud Cramer (Alabama)
* Lincoln Davis (Tennessee)
* Joe Donnelly (Indiana)
* Brad Ellsworth (Indiana)
* Kirsten Gillibrand (New York)
* Jane Harman (California)
* Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (South Dakota)
* Baron Hill (Indiana)
* Tim Holden (Pennsylvania)
* Steve Israel (New York)
* Tim Mahoney (Florida)
* Jim Marshall (Georgia)
* Jim Matheson (Utah)
* Mike McIntyre (North Carolina)
* Charlie Melancon (Louisiana)
* Mike Michaud (Maine)
* Dennis Moore (Kansas)
* Patrick Murphy (Pennsylvania)
* Collin Peterson (Minnesota)
* Earl Pomeroy (North Dakota)
* Mike Ross (Arkansas)
* John Salazar (Colorado)
* Loretta Sanchez (California)
* Adam Schiff (California)
* David Scott (Georgia)
* Heath Shuler (North Carolina)
* John Tanner (Tennessee)
* Gene Taylor (Mississippi)
* Mike Thompson (California)
* Charlie Wilson (Ohio)
And here’s the link to the House Website where you can find their contact info, or the contact info for your own representative (you can either type in your zip code to find your rep, or scroll through the list in the drop down menu at the top of the House home page).
I suggest you give them a call if you can make the time to let them know what you think of their craven rejection of the will of the American people regarding the Iraq War. They are acting like 2006 gave Bush a mandate to continue the war, when just the opposite was true. They were elected to stand up to Bush, not kowtow to him and lick his faux cowboy boots.
Please call or email these Congress critters if you can.
Thanks.
I’m in Iowa’s 1st District, not 3rd, but I went ahead and wrote to Boswell.
but is this the bill that is “clean” through July and then the entire occupation would be up for a vote?
Kind of, but not exactly.
It’s only clean in the limited sense that it funds the war for May, June, and July, but there is the reporting requirement, and talk of preparedness requirements.
that’s what I thought. From the diary, it looked like there may have been a different one that I didn’t know about.
I told Booman the other night that there is a majority in both houses in favor of a “Clean Bill” if it comes up for a vote. That majority is mostly made up of the Republican minority, but there are enough Dems who will vote for it that it would pass.
Our leadership should continue to send up compromise legislation, not try to whip the “moderates” into voting down a clean bill. That would be bad politics in my opinion so far we are making the Republicans vote against funding the troops.
PS From what I have been following, Patrick Murphy has been a pretty stout voice for ending the war and the various bills which have been put forward to do so, despite his Blue Dog membership his votes have been good.
I don’t think there is a majority for stripping restrictions, I do think there is a majority for a “clean bill” if it is brought up a vote.
This is one big reason why it is so crucially important for us to be involved in primary elections. As the general elections determine the course of the country, primary elections determine the course of the party. It’s not fair to complain about a rubber stamp congress if those people where put there by rubber stamp primary voters.
The good news is that primary elections generally have abysmal turnouts, so the impact of partisan activism is vastly greater than it is in the general election.
I know — believe me — how frustrating it is that we aren’t seeing the changes we want NOW, but politics moves at a snail’s pace, and what happens today has in many cases been determined by what happened five or six years ago. Ergo, if you want a better world in 2012, get involved in the local political battlefield TODAY. The Republican ascendancy was the product of decades of exactly this kind of work, and it’s a good thing to keep in mind when you despair of the Dems never being as leftist as you’d like — the object lesson of the modern GOP is that we can take the party as far from the center as we want, if we are patient and never give up.
I agree with you, but this isn’t a “leftist” vote. It’s the position of at least 60% of the American public. There’s practically no support for giving Bush an free ride on Iraq anymore.
Yes, but it’s probably not the position of 60% of the electorate in all those Blue Dog districts. I know the TN districts in question well, and I would be beyond shocked if the figure was much above 30% — except, just maybe, in Jim Cooper’s district, but even there, I doubt it exceeds 50%.
The national figures do not necessarily match up with the figures in, say, Fentress County. And it is worth noting that congressmen are not elected to represent the national will, nor are they elected to serve the Democratic Party; they are elected to represent the will of their districts. Those that don’t are eventually replaced. The Blue Dogs do not exist in a vacuum.
It should be the new model for government, voting in candidates for 3 month terms to be extended upon meeting certain requirements.
I am fairly new here or I would say I told you so about the Blue dawgs and a few other things about the dems.
Going back two years you could pick up the clues to what was going on just by checking out the number of “new” dem orgs and “think blogs”..you would have found their ads on side bars of several blog sites. I don’t remember the exact date the Democracy Arsenal popped up but any reading of it would have told you a “neoliberal” group was being positioned within the dems. Observation tells me that some position themselves this way thinking that is their ticket to getting elected, for others it really is their ideology. Pretty soon they will be the same “cabal” within in the dems as the cabal within the WH and the repubs. It’s no secret either that Rham Emanual is leading the charge in sheparding in the new demneo.
But the dems are getting so far off track it gives me heartburn….and I have doubts that 2006 was the election they think it was..meaning “for” them instead of just “against” the war and demanding change.
To give an example I confess thqt despite being a registered dem, I voted for a repub congressman instead of his dem challenger who stressed “security”…why?…because he said loud and clear early on he was “wrong and lax and should have been more questioning before he voted on Iraq” and he was the one lonely congressman who stood up in the Iraq hearing two years ago and dennounced Perle and waved a copy of Bamford’s Pretext for War in his face and called him a liar responsible for American deaths. The repub was elected with an overwhelming majority on his new found anti war honesty in this very, very military and normally conserative district.
What does that tell us and why aren’t ALL the dems catching on?..because they are listening to their “consultants” and not the public…or they are blinded by their own personal ideology.