{"id":3343,"date":"2009-02-04T19:14:19","date_gmt":"2009-02-05T02:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2009\/02\/04\/blue-dog-contigency\/"},"modified":"2009-02-04T19:14:43","modified_gmt":"2009-02-05T02:14:43","slug":"blue-dog-contigency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2009\/02\/04\/blue-dog-contigency\/","title":{"rendered":"blue dog contingency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#800080\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: Georgia\">It&#8217;s worth <a href=\"http:\/\/clerk.house.gov\/evs\/2009\/roll046.xml#N\">listing the eleven Democratic congress-critters who voted negative to the Grand Stimulus Bill <\/a>&#8212; joining the Republican Unity Vote.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess these eleven congress members count as <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/politico\/20090202\/pl_politico\/18274\">the core of the Blue Dog Caucus <\/a>&#8212; the heir apparents to yesterday&#8217;s Boll Weevils and <span class=\"yshortcuts\"><span style=\"background-position: 0% 0%; background-attachment: scroll; cursor: hand\" id=\"lw_1233799454_0\">Yellow Dogs<\/span><\/span> and wind through history from there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black; font-family: Georgia\"><\/span><span style=\"color: black; font-family: Georgia\">Boyd<br \/>\nBright<br \/>\nCooper<br \/>\nEllsworth<br \/>\nGriffith<br \/>\nKanjorski<br \/>\nKratovil<br \/>\nMinnick<br \/>\nPeterson<br \/>\nShuler<br \/>\nTaylor<\/span><span style=\"color: black; font-family: Georgia\">It&#8217;s not a surprising group &#8212; lay out the scenario of an 11 Democrat Dissension a few weeks ago to someone who follows the Congress, give them 15 names to fill, and they will probably come up with if not all eleven than maybe ten.\u00c2\u00a0 They are the ones who joined the <span class=\"yshortcuts\"><span id=\"lw_1233799454_1\">Republican Party<\/span><\/span> in their careful comb-over to spot a two percent pork rate.<\/p>\n<p>I know little about the people on this list.\u00c2\u00a0 I know that <span class=\"yshortcuts\"><span style=\"cursor: hand\" id=\"lw_1233799454_2\">Heath Shuler<\/span><\/span> and Ellsworth are close, and tied their electoral fortunes to each other&#8217;s upon similar elections and backgrounds in the 2006 election.\u00c2\u00a0 I know the Republicans once attempted to recruit Shuler to run.\u00c2\u00a0 I know Shuler is wading into a Senate race prospect, where he will most closely align with <span class=\"yshortcuts\"><span style=\"cursor: hand\" id=\"lw_1233799454_3\">Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor<\/span><\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 And I know he is there the Democratic hierarchy&#8217;s choice to run for the <span class=\"yshortcuts\"><span style=\"cursor: hand\" id=\"lw_1233799454_4\">Senate seat<\/span><\/span>, ie:\u00c2\u00a0 Schumer&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>I recognize Walt Minnick as the man who just won a congressional seat in <\/span><st1:state><st1:place><span style=\"color: black; font-family: Georgia\">Idaho<\/span><\/st1:place><\/st1:state><span style=\"color: black; font-family: Georgia\"> against a Republican who qualifies as being on the &#8220;Lunatic Fringe&#8221; of the party &#8212; who is now staking a comeback, and whose Republican nomination would probably serve up Minnick&#8217;s best chance at re-election.<o:p><\/o:p><\/span><span style=\"color: black; font-family: Georgia\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"color: black; font-family: Georgia\">But here the House is meaningless except a portal of the Games to be played in the Senate &#8212; which now takes the cues from a unified vote and recognizes that they possess the requisite 41 votes, but also is not fully of the &#8220;Rump Team&#8221; variety of safe district victors taking cues from <span class=\"yshortcuts1\"><span style=\"cursor: hand\" id=\"lw_1233799596_0\">Joe the Plumber<\/span><\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 <span class=\"yshortcuts1\"><span style=\"background-position: 0% 0%; background-attachment: scroll; cursor: hand\" id=\"lw_1233799596_1\">Obama<\/span><\/span> and the Democrats&#8217; role becomes one of finding, in the Senate, an equivalency to the House Blue Dog caucus, as well as to quit telegraphing the amount of Republican Support they hope their bill receives &#8212; too far out of their hands.\u00c2\u00a0 It is with this and with the Daschle and assorted tax fiascos &#8212; and oddly enough the Judd Gregg replacement deal is cited here as well &#8212; that this week supposedly becomes a &#8220;victorious week for the Republicans&#8221;.\u00c2\u00a0 But I&#8217;m hardly in the tit-for-tat tally sheet theory of party winning \/ losing &#8212; it&#8217;s a pointless proposition.\u00c2\u00a0 Mr. 75 percent will now learn the limits of his &#8220;bi-partisan purview&#8221;, and the basic rule that he, as the center of his political party, is the one anyone is going to listen to admist a sea of the buzzing Republican politicians whose hum has filled that void.\u00c2\u00a0 Two weeks, nobody&#8217;s adjustment can ever be that pure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s worth listing the eleven Democratic congress-critters who voted negative to the Grand Stimulus Bill &#8212; joining the Republican Unity Vote.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess these eleven congress members count as the core of the Blue Dog Caucus &#8212; the heir apparents to yesterday&#8217;s Boll Weevils and Yellow Dogs and wind through history from there. Boyd Bright [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}