Gone to the Dogs!

August 11th, 2007

Roll over, Blue Dogs! Sit! Fetch! Lap at that bowl of “fiscal conservatism,” resting uneasy near the Big Dogs in the pack, while your Master over in the other kennel spends like a drunken sailor on war and taxbreaks for his fat-cat friends — snarl and snap at the mere mention of phantom Islamofascists while behind your back, thugs and con-men raid the pantry and ransack the House — growl and bark like you’re really Blue, when those Red Spots on your spine give you away. Must be Heelers — you’re pretty well trained, but not overly smart.

Better be careful visiting your sponsers, now that you’ve been given a month to run free at home. Some of those who sent you to the Hill may have noticed you just pissed all over them, that although they sent you out with clear instructions to bring home a rabbit, you’re coming back empty … and some of them have shotguns, just like Uncle Dick!

So much for the damned hounds. They’re loyal to their cross-bred ideology — not the Constitution. They need to be sent back where they came from — that, or the pound. [And not that I don't think the rest of the pack looks like a bunch of flea-bit mutts, too ... they need an obedience school refresher course!]

Jude

Waking Up to a Working Republican Majority
Matt Stoller
Thu Aug 09, 2007

I’m beginning to explore an idea that I’m not entirely sold on, which is that in the House, while Democrats are in control, there is effectively a Republican working majority. If true, this has a number of implications, both electoral and political. But first, I’ll illustrate my thinking, which basically boils down to the fact that politically speaking, Bush is effectively using the surge model to govern in all policy arenas. Take tax policy.

President Bush said yesterday that he is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations to make them more competitive around the world, an initiative that could further inflame a battle with the Democratic Congress over spending and taxes and help define the remainder of his tenure.

Advisers presented Bush with a series of ideas to restructure corporate taxes, possibly eliminating narrowly targeted breaks to pay for a broader, across-the-board rate cut. In an interview with a small group of journalists afterward, Bush said he was “inclined” to send a corporate tax package to Congress, although he expressed uncertainty about its political viability.

It’s a simple pattern. When Bush loses ground politically, he simply changes his ask. It’s the equivalent of negotiating with someone to sell them a bike for $50, and when they find a problem with the bike, changing the price to $75 and negotiating the final price to $65. It’s bad faith negotiating, but it’s working, because Democratic leaders aren’t able to walk away from the table out of a mixture of fear, incompetence, and insufficient liberal voting strength. They always stupidly buy the bike at the higher price.

The FISA bill debacle is a good example. I’ve been in email contact with a variety of sources inside the House, and there’s certainly tremendous bitterness at what happened with FISA, as well as a recognition that the ’stand up and cave’ rhetoric strategy is now a clear pattern for this Congress. Steny Hoyer is the weak link in the House leadership, and though I can’t read tea leaves that well, I think that Blue Dogs are essentially threatening a revolt against Pelosi if she tries to impose real discipline. In addition, the Senate is making it nearly impossible for her to stand up for liberalism. With a reactionary Senate that has about 10 neoconservative Democrats and a neoconservative President, liberals cannot govern except on the most clear-cut and non-controversial issues, like poor children’s health care (which itself might be vetoed).

So while we may have thought we gained a check on Bush in 2006, we actually didn’t. What we gained was a more progressive Democratic Party, but we started from such a low base that the Republicans essentially can still govern. Now, holding the majority is nice for subpoena power, and that matters. But when you combine a conservative Senate, a Blue Dog swing block, and an extreme White House, you may have a situation similar to the Boll Weevil Democrats in the early 1980s and their working relationship with Reagan. I’m not sure how well the analogy holds up since I’ve never studied that period in history, but regardless, Bush has realized that his conservative governing mandate is still intact.

In 2006, the midterms registered a clear antiwar message, but instead of listening, Bush surged troops, and politically speaking, it worked. No one stopped him. Bush, weaker than he’s ever been as President in terms of popular approval and credibility, is governing this country through a mix of veto threats, bad faith negotiating tactics via surrogates like Mike McConnell and David Patraeus, and Blue Dogs. This is true with Bush’s rampant lawbreaking and authoritarian criminal impulses. No one stops him. I’m no longer content to think that Blue Dogs are acting out of fear of being criticized, at this point I am going to take the Heath Shuler’s at their word and recognize them as right-wingers.

To be clear, there’s reason for optimism, as this is a temporary situation and we’ve made enormous progress since 2002. There are more self-identified liberals today than there have been since 1972, independents are swinging far to the left, and the base Democratic vote is making the difference in elections. The Democratic Party of 2007 is much more progressive than that of 2002, and at the rate we’re gaining reliable liberal votes (10/year), there will be an unbreakable progressive House majority by 2012. The overall intellectual environment, the shattering of the right-wing careerist foreign policy community, the increasing efficiency of liberal advocacy groups, the increased participation of progressive economy sectors in the political sector, and the liberalization of the White House and Senate, can also have significant effects. Our politicians are obviously behind the curve, with Clinton quasi-supporting the surge and Obama in his most recent Iowa ad doesn’t call himself a Democrat. But this is temporary.

I don’t have a good strategy on how to ‘fix’ the Senate, but to get to a progressive working majority in the House, we need to pick up 41 more reliable votes, either by beating Republicans or by converting or beating Blue Dog Democrats. If we can get to an uncompromising progressive majority in the House, then the Senate will be dragged along through conference committees and a Democratic White House. In the Senate, we’ll need 16 for a clear progressive majority, but because of institutional dynamics we’ll probably need less to have a working majority.

There are several paths to making this happen in the House.

Pick Up Safe Seats Progressives: This is what we are trying to do in Massachusetts 5th, where a reactionary Niki Tsongas is facing four other candidates, including progressive Jamie Eldridge. There’s also a primary in TN-09, Harold Ford’s old haunt.

Convert Reactionary Democrats: Both Al Wynn and Ellen Tauscher are good examples of how this can be done, and this is continuing against Daniel Lipinski, Al Wynn, and Henry Cuellar.

Beat Republicans: In 2006, Democrats picked up 30 seats in the House. Out of those pickups, 11 voted for the FISA expansion, and 19 didn’t.

Convert Republicans: I’m not sure how this is supposed to work. Americans Against the Escalation in Iraq is trying to crack Republicans, but this is very very difficult.

Republicans have run right-wing primary challenges against dissidents for 30 years, since 1978. Countering that is extremely tough, though recent moves by the Mainstream Partnership could have effects.

If there is a Republican working majority, with the Blue Dogs as the swing group, that should have one very significant effect on our strategy. In a House with a minority role for Democrats, electing a Blue Dog Democrat is far superior than electing a Republican. But in a majority Democratic House where conservatives have a governing working majority, electing a Blue Dog Democrat is little different than electing a Republican when it comes to public policy choices. Electing a Blue Dog is not going to help us restore out Constitutional fabric, hold these people accountable, deal with global warming, energy, health care, or restore a progressive tax code. More significantly, more Blue Dogs aren’t going to give someone like Pelosi the leverage she needs to do any of these things.

What this means is clear. No longer should we as progressives particularly care whether a Democrat is in a swing district or Republican district when considering how to evaluate them. It is more important to elect progressives and destroy the power of Blue Dogs than to increase our partisan advantage in the House, though these goals are complements and not substitutes. The Colorado example, of turning a libertarian-esque red state into a Blue Dog state at the behest of wealthy billionaires, is not something to emulate. Rather, we should look at the New Hampshire example, which has turned a libertarian-esque red state into a deep blue progressive libertarian area.

There’s one other important rhetorical consequence here. When Blue Dogs vote with Bush, they are not ‘betraying’ us any more than Republicans are when they vote with Bush. Blue Dogs just don’t agree with us. And when they vote to expand wiretapping or to cut taxes for the wealthy or to support endless war, they are acting like Blue Dogs, and Blue Dogs support President Bush and the conservative movement.

Blue Dog Democrats, Staunch Bush Allies
Matt Renner, t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 10 August 2007

A tightly-knit group of self-styled moderate and conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives known as the Blue Dog Coalition supported controversial legislation granting the Bush administration expanded powers to spy on Americans. The group was instrumental in passing legislation that was opposed by a vast majority of Democrats.

According to their web site, the coalition named themselves Blue Dogs because “their moderate-to-conservative-views had been ‘choked blue’ by their party in the years leading up to the 1994 election.” They have had some success taking seats from Republican incumbents. According to their web site, 24 Blue Dogs won elections against Republican incumbents since 1996.

The Blue Dogs pride themselves on being a fiscally conservative group intent on balancing the national budget and paying down the almost $9 trillion national debt. Tim Mahoney, who became the Representative for the 16th district of Florida after disgraced Republican Mark Foley dropped out of the 2006 election, recently became a member of the Blue Dogs. When he joined up, Mahoney described the coalition as a select group with an agenda. “We’re hawks on national defense, we’re pro-business, especially small business, and we believe in balancing the budget,” Mahoney said. According to Mahoney, he faced a thorough vetting process before being accepted into the group. “You have to be interviewed and accepted by the group. You have to be able to demonstrate that you’re ideologically supportive of being fiscally conservative. You show them speeches and statements you’ve made in the past,” Mahoney told the Charlotte Sun, a local paper from his district.

The Blue Dogs have apparently informed the Democratic leadership in the House that they support the ongoing occupation of Iraq. According to Mahoney, he met with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and told her “The president should be free to maintain troops in Iraq, if the purpose is to thwart terrorism.”

Mahoney’s description of the Blue Dog’s hawkish stance is not officially part of their platform, according to their spokesperson and their web site. The group does not issue press releases on national defense votes, although they have played an instrumental role in passing controversial bills that have been framed by the Bush administration as legislation intended to prevent terrorism.

The Blue Dogs have provided key votes on controversial bills backed by the Bush administration. In September of 2006, 31 Democratic representatives voted with the Republican majority in the House to pass The Military Commissions Act. The controversial act empowered Bush to designate individuals as “enemy combatants,” and deny them certain legal rights. Twenty-three of the Democrats who supported the bill were Blue Dogs. At 10:20 PM on Saturday, August 4, 2007, with the help of 31 Blue Dogs, the House Republicans passed the Protect America Act, a bill that altered the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and weakened safeguards against domestic warrantless wiretapping. The bill, a replica of a proposal by the Bush administration, passed with a 44 vote margin, with 227 Yeas and 183 Nays. Despite comprising 76 percent of the Democratic support for the bill, communications director for the Blue Dogs, Kristen Hawn, said that the Blue Dog Coalition took no official position on the bill.

Despite the fracture among Democrats, Pelosi allowed the Republican bill to come to the floor for a vote. After it passed, she went on record saying that the bill “does violence to the Constitution of the United States.”

Earlier in the week, a FISA revision proposed by the Democrats as a compromise with the Bush administration was placed on the suspension calendar by the Speaker. This procedural move made the bill safe from amendments but also significantly raised the number of votes required to pass it. Because of the move, the bill required a two-thirds majority vote, a margin the Democrats were unable to achieve. The Democratic leadership was faced with a choice: allow the President’s bill to come to the floor, or defy the President’s demand for action and take their summer recess without updating FISA. Pelosi’s office did not return phone calls for comment.

Michelle Richardson, Legislative Consultant for the ACLU in Washington, D.C., said that legislation left many issues unresolved and open to interpretation by the Bush administration. “The FISA bill is an absolute embarrassment. The idea that Congress would pass legislation, in this day and age, that would allow the government to spy on Americans with out any independent review from the courts or Congress is unbelievable.”

According to Richardson, the bill does not address vital spying protocol issues. “We don’t know how information will be collected, who has access to the data or how it can be used. The next bill should put specific and explicit controls on whether and how to collect or use the US phone calls and emails that are collected,” Richardson said.

Democrats have vowed to revisit the legislation after the Congressional recess. In a letter to the Chairmen of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, Pelosi asked for new legislation to be crafted. “Many provisions of this legislation are unacceptable, and, although the bill has a six month sunset clause, I do not believe the American people will wait that long before corrective action is taken.”

For the final vote tallies on the Protect America Act visit this link.

The Blue Dog Coalition consists of 47 members. The 31 who voted in favor of the “Protect America Act” are in bold.

Mike Arcuri (NY-24)
Joe Baca (CA-43)
John Barrow (GA-12)
Melissa Bean (IL-08)
Marion Berry (AR-01)
Sanford Bishop (GA-02)
Dan Boren (OK-02)
Leonard Boswell (IA-03)
Allen Boyd (FL-02)
Dennis Cardoza (CA-18)
Christopher Carney (PA-10)
Ben Chandler (KY-06)
Jim Cooper (TN-05)
Jim Costa (CA-20)
Bud Cramer (AL-05)
Lincoln Davis (TN-04)
Joe Donnelly (IN-02)
Brad Ellsworth (IN-08)
Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20)
Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-08)
Bart Gordon (TN-06)
Jane Harman (CA-36)
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD)
Baron Hill (IN-09)
Tim Holden (PA-17)
Nick Lampson (TX-22)
Mike McIntyre (NC-07)
Tim Mahoney (FL-16)
Jim Marshall (GA-03)
Jim Matheson (UT-02)
Charles Melancon (LA-03)
Mike Michaud (ME-02)
Dennis Moore (KS-03)
Patrick Murphy (PA-08)
Collin Peterson (MN-07)
Earl Pomeroy (ND)
Mike Ross (AR-04)
John Salazar (CO-03)
Loretta Sanchez (CA-47)
Adam Schiff (CA-29)
David Scott (GA-13)
Heath Shuler (NC-11)
Zack Space (OH-18)
John Tanner (TN-08)
Gene Taylor (MS-04)
Mike Thompson (CA-01)
Charles Wilson (OH-06)

Matt Renner is an assistant editor and Washington reporter for Truthout.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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