Blue Dog Saboteurs
Matt Stoler, the thought leader in the internet wing of the progressive movement, has published a List of Blue Dog Saboteurs, Democrats who are refusing to vote for a bill with “a certain date for withdrawal” from Iraq.
In the hopes of getting the message out, I reproduce that list in its entirety below:
Michael Arcuri (NY-24)
John Barrow (GA-12)
Melissa Bean (IL-08)
Dan Boren (OK-02)
Jim Cooper (TN-05)
Bud Cramer (AL-02)
Brad Ellsworth (IN-08)
Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20)
Baron Hill (IN-09)
Tim Mahoney (FL-16)
Jim Marshall (GA-08)
Mike McIntyre (NC-07)
John Peterson (PA-05)
John Salazar (CO-03)
Joe Sestak (PA-07)
Heath Shuler (NC-11)
Gene Taylor (MS-04)
These scoundrels should be horsewhipped. Or, at very least, driven from the Democratic Party.
Indeed, it is my firm hope that these DINOs will either resign from Congress and run as Republicans or simply be replaced by Republicans in the next election. The country would certainly be better served if only Democrats who pledge no deviation from the BlogPAC platform emerged from the primaries.
Ummm… Yeah.
And yet, Stoller will decry the Republicans as being extremist goose-steppers.
Burn the heretics. Do not let them think they can escape liberal judgement.
Lets do some math here. 233 democrats, 201 republicans and 1 vacancy. Subtract 17 from the democrats and add to the republicans. 216 democrats, 218 republicans and one vacancy. That seems about right.
You can hardly blame a liberal activist for borrowing a page from his right-wing analogues.
Not that the party need listen to him, let alone the voters.
Still, on the merits, the “Blue Dogs” do seem to be in an inexplicable position regarding Iraq. I don’t know anyone who thinks that Bush has done a great job, and maintaining the status quo of the administration’s unfettered discretion with regard to military operations seems more like laziness and inertia than policy. The only real explanation is to deny the Republicans the windfall of Democratic ownership of the war, but I couldn’t come up with a more blatently partisan tactic that does nothing to help the country…
Yes Bithead, It is the Liberals new Nazi order that is jackass-stepping all over rights with an Iron Hoof.
I can’t speak to the others but Melissa Bean is a moderate representing a fairly conservative district (Phil Crain’s old district). Outrage at her looks like a pretty good formula for losing a district.
I think several of the people on that list are in that boat.
I don’t think they have much choice, if they want to keep their jobs.
The trouble with that is, people can think Bush hasn’t done “a great job” for different, even diametrically opposed, reasons — such that voting with the cut-and-run Murthacrats is even less palatable than standing, however reluctantly, with the President.
Yeah, I don’t know anyone who thinks that either. Probably because most of them don’t come out of their basements to face the sunlight.