Many on the Left are livid with the Blue Dogs because rather than fall in line in support of the Obama agenda, they have slowed consideration of both cap-and-trade and the health care overhaul. There is certain to be real anger at the report that their efforts are being rewarded with an unprecedented cash haul from affected industries: So far this year, the political action | Read More »
I pointed out yesterday that Democrats made a major mistake when they tied their credibility to porkulus, and then allowed Capitol Hill to debate health care rationing and cap-and-tax at the same time. Congress cannot both walk and chew gum – especially when they’re starting to worry about the 2010 political climate. The fights over which should be a top priority, and the uncertainty over | Read More »
As I mentioned a few days ago, I find it entertaining when liberals and the mainstream media question who leads the Republican party. The real question is who leads the Democrats. Is it the old line Pelosi/Reid/Rangel/Obama/Waxman liberals, or is it the moderates who worry that the voters will punish them for following a standard liberal agenda. On health care, we see yet again that | Read More »
Today is a big day for the Blue Dog Democrats. They’ve spent the first 6 months of this administration supine, voting for whatever spending Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi told them to. As a result, the federal deficit is approaching $2 trillion – with nothing to show for it. All along, Barack Obama has paid lip service to the Congressional budget rule known as PayGo. | Read More »
I have consistently argued that the ‘Blue Dog’ label is essentially meaningless – that it is nothing more than an advertising slogan to help Democrats get elected in conservative districts while voting with liberals in DC. Blue Dogs in Congress claim to have no higher priority than deficit reduction and balanced budgets, but they have acted as accomplices to Pelosi, Reid, and President Obama, as | Read More »
George Soros, MoveOn.org, the SEIU, the unions, and Barack Obama’s other supporters are pouring millions into the effort to put pressure on swing Democrats to support the Obama budget. Apparently their money is being wasted: Aides to moderate Senate and House Democrats being targeted by ads and e-mail campaigns said their offices have fielded a relatively light volume of telephone calls, especially in comparison to | Read More »
I was in a debate a little while ago with a representative of MoveOn.org who got rather angry when I told him that his organization was going to wind up applying a lot more pressure on moderate Democrats than on Republicans over the next two years. He assured me that despite the defeat of dozens of swing-seat Republicans in the last two cycles, there were | Read More »
More of this, please: The conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks is launching a search engine advertising campaign this week targeting all 49 of the fiscally conservative House Democrats, either criticizing or applauding them for how they voted on the stimulus package. The organization is buying spots in Google’s “Sponsored Links” column, which appears alongside searches for the lawmakers’ names. Don’t be surprised if, in the comfort | Read More »
Gee, there seem to be lots of Blue Dogs going home and telling their constituents: The stimulus was too partisan; Republicans got shut out of the process; and, The Blue Dogs are so influential that Congressional leaders can’t ignore them anymore. It begs the question: if the Blue Dogs are so influential, then why are they now apologizing and declaiming responsibility for how it turned | Read More »
The Blue Dogs make a pretty good case: they bellied up to the bar and by-and-large supported a spending bill that Joe Biden warns will be used against them next year. Now the House leadership seems likely to ask them to line up and vote to end the secret ballot for union organizing — which is likely to wind up even less popular than the | Read More »
Get Flash Congressional Democrats have now agreed to a ‘bipartisan stimulus compromise’ supported by fewer than 1 percent of Congressional Republicans, on a plan to spend about $780 billion or so of your money trying to get the economy moving again. Economists say this bill might provide a few temporary jobs for some workers, but it does nothing to correct the fundamental problems of the | Read More »
Several days ago I wrote about the toothless and useless ‘Blue Dog Democrats,’ who strut around bragging about their commitment to balanced budgets, but who regularly take a dive when told to. Apparently their liberal masters have told them it’s time to shut up and get in line.
It is starting to seem that Barack Obama and Harry Reid may finally be browbeating enough Senators to get 60 votes for their debt spending bill. The word is that moderates might be coalescing together on a compromise at around $800 billion or so. But just as if the Democrats seem like they might be pulling it together to pass a terrible bill through the | Read More »
It was always hard to imagine that every Democrat would march in lockstep support of a massive spending bill that stands little chance of actually doing anything to help the economy. But I would not have expected that a Blue Dog like Shuler would choose inauguration day to rain on Barack Obama’s parade: Shuler, who twice voted against the $700 billion bank rescue and the | Read More »
It was only a week or so ago that we caught Blue Dog leader Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin spinning nonsense to her local press. She was pointing out that the Blue Dog caucus is larger than it has ever been — so large that they are ‘impossible to ignore’ — and then explaining why the Blue Dogs are forced to play dead while Barack Obama and the | Read More »
I’ve written before about the move by House “Blue Dogs” to roll over and agree to dramatically increase the federal deficit to pay for pork-barrel projects. So far the Blue Dog strategy seems to be to forget about balancing the budget for the foreseeable future in exchange for a vague promise down the road. It seems that Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin — the chief architect | Read More »
Congressional Blue Dogs are commonly described as moderate or conservative Democrats, but it’s probably more accurate to describe them as deficit hawks. While they’re typically somewhat to the right of their Democrat brethren, their calling card is an insistence on balanced budgets, including stiff tax increases to close deficits. So what’s a Blue Dog to do when your newly-elected president is calling for hundreds of | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}