Blue Dogs lie with liberals, where are the fleas?

Bob Novak:

Conservatives rationalized on May 13 when Republicans lost their third consecutive special Congressional election, in the supposedly safe 1st District of Mississippi. After all, they said, the victorious Democratic candidate Travis Childers, sounded more conservative during the campaign than his losing Republican candidate. He was a county official, a good old boy who the voters figured would be an independent conservative vote in the House as one of the Blue Dog Democrats.

But once in Washington, he drank the Democratic leadership’s Kool Aid. In the first 13 House roll calls contested along partisan lines after Childers took his seat in Congress, he voted with the Democrats 12 times.

Childers fit right in with the Blue Dogs elected in 2006 to give Democrats control of the House after a dozen years of a Republican majority. They won office by campaigning as independent conservatives. But in the House starting in January 2007, they have voted the Democratic line -- with no exceptions -- more than 80 percent of the time.

The Blue Dogs are different in kind than the old “Redneck Caucus” or the “Boll Weevils” -- genuinely conservative Democratic members of Congress from the South who constituted a virtual third party on Capitol Hill for half a century beginning in the mid -1930s. They collaborated so often with the Republicans in frustrating liberal initiatives, frequently proposals by a Democratic president, that the usual massive Congressional majorities were illusory.

But the South’s seats in both House and Senate once held by Boll Weevils are now mostly occupied by Republicans. The Blue Dogs come from all over the country, from districts generally conservative but not traditionally or firmly Republican. In 2006 when the political currents were running against the GOP, they could campaign as conservatives opposed to Republican corruption and hypocrisy and against knee-jerk liberalism. Their profile: hard-line on immigration and terrorism, highly critical of President Bush’s war policy, pro-gun and usually pro-life, contemptuous of Republican deficit spending. They pledged they would not be beholden to Nancy Pelosi in Congress.

But as House members, the Blue Dogs from the Class of ’06 have followed the Pelosi line. In HUMAN EVENTS of April 18, 2007, I tracked 10 of them who consistently voted as Speaker Pelosi wants. A survey of their performances since then shows they have not changed. Most are usually dependable votes for the majority party on issues where the leadership cracks the party whip.

...

The one dissenter on the Colombian free trade vote and the one absent Congressman on the Iraqi troop withdrawal was the same person: Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Tex.). Paradoxically, he is arguably the most liberal of the selected l0 Blue Dogs as reflected during five previous terms representing the Beaumont area. He was wiped out in the 2004 election following the Texas redistricting engineered by former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). Lampson filed as a candidate in DeLay’s Houston-area district and campaigned as a moderate in this Republican territory. Lampson was elected when DeLay was indicted by a politicized district attorney.

Now representing a district that is clearly too conservative for him and makes him the leading Democratic target in a bad year for Republicans, Lampson is the least dependable Blue Dog for Democratic leaders. Out of eight important roll calls, Lampson voted with his own party on only three issues -- State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), opposition to FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and the Democratic energy bill. He voted with the Republicans on four issues, including two tax increases, and was absent for the Iraq withdrawal roll call. The key to a Blue Dog’s voting pattern seems to be not his personal ideology but how safe his district is.

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There is much more.

Lampson is a product of the Democrat politics of fraud and deceit. He is willing to say and do any thing to hold onto power, but if the vote count calls his bluff, he will be with Pelosi as the vote on FISA shows. He has also voted for losing in Iraq, but backed off of that position when he was heavily criticized.

Chet Edwards is another faux conservative Demcorat who represents the College Station area. He is even more wily than Lampson. Edwards has little opposition to worry about this year, but Lampson is in a real fight and should lose. He would have lost last time if the Democrats had not thwarted democracy by not allowing a Republican on the ballot to replace DeLay who was being subjected to the Democrats criminalization of political differences.

the fact is that the Blue dogs are winning through the politics of fraud and Republicans need to find a way to expose that fraud. Novak's piece is a good start. He examines voting patterns in detail for several of them with charts showing their backing of Pelosi. His piece is worth reading in full and hopefully the Republican Campaign Committee is looking at it in detail.