The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced Friday it will launch a series of district-specific radio ads targeting vulnerable Republicans who voted against President Obama’s controversial war supplemental package.
As a matter of national security in years past Republicans have shown tremendous support for similar measures, however last week they voted en bloc against the $106 billion appropriations bill.
The Democratic Leadership and the DCCC would be content to let the public believe Republicans were “playing politics” with the troops, having voted against the emergency legislation out of pure spite for the president.
Over 100 Republicans voted for the bill when the first iteration—before the $83.5 billion bill mushroomed—reached the floor of the House several weeks ago. But after the Democratic Leadership rewrote the bill to include billions in funding for lawmakers’ pet projects, including an additional $5 billion in funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), virtually all Republicans defected, accusing the Democrats of lacing the emergency war-funding bill with billions of extraneous pork barrel spending.
If a global bailout is to be to debated and funded, it surely does not belong in a war appropriations bill. Democrats know this, just like they knew bailout-averse Republicans would, instinctively, vote against any such measure. And then they realized they had the upper-hand, they held the coveted “you’re-playing-politics-with-the-troops” card.
