In observing the unraveling of the governing coalition and the vicious infighting breaking out in the Democratic party (“Who lost ObamaCare?” will obsess the Left for years, I suspect), James Taranto writes:
One can fault President Obama for pursuing an agenda that would be bad for the country or for his party. But one can hardly fault progressives in Congress, much less activists who don’t even hold office, for seeking to advance the ideology in which they believe–for taking their own side in an intraparty debate.
The problem is that Democratic centrists rolled over. Either they yielded their centrist principles in the face of progressive intimidation, or those principles didn’t amount to much to begin with. The most dramatic illustration of this point is the list of moderate Democrats in the Senate: Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Jim Webb. Every one of them voted for ObamaCare. Any one of them alone could have put a stop to ObamaCare simply by casting a vote against cloture. Several of them voted “yes” in exchange for special privileges for their states, making quite clear that theirs was not a principled stand.
I think the answer to that is “those principles didn’t amount to much to begin with.” Indeed, these “centrists” didn’t merely fall off the fiscal conservative bandwagon on ObamaCare — not one of them opposed the monstrous stimulus plan. Only Evan Bayh opposed the 2009 noxious $410 billion omnibus spending plan with 8,500 earmarks. In other words, the so-called moderates never demonstrated any real moderation or inclination to restrain the Reid-Pelosi-Obama juggernaut.
And when confronted with legislation their constituents hated and that defied the fiscal conservative line on which they had ridden into office, they readily complied with their liberal leadership, in no small part because they perceived the risk of crossing the president and their Democratic colleagues to be greater than the risk of angering moderate voters. This was especially true for those who would not face the voters this year. (Only Bayh and Lincoln will.)
It’s a well-known pattern for many Democrats, Harry Reid included, from Red or Purple states: talk a conservative game back home, make speeches on fiscal sobriety, and roll over for liberal leadership when it comes to actual votes. Usually they get away with it when the public is not so engaged, the legislation is not so controversial, and Republicans blur the lines by defecting to vote with the bulk of Democrats. But here the public was vigilant, the legislation was noxious both in substance and in process, and Republicans held the line in their unanimous opposition to ObamaCare. So now these “centrists” are finding it hard to hide and explain why they threw in their lot with Reid-Pelosi-Obama. They may regret having “blown their cover” as faux fiscal conservatives for a bill that probably won’t pass and that is now the rallying point for an energized opposition.
This video – Obama on my Shoulder
- is high comedy –
http://townhall.com/video/HamNation/1450_06052008
How are we not hearing more about Earmarks. McCain has a sterling record on Earmarks, while Obama in his short time in the Senate has already made sure that his wife’s employer got paid.
Watching the Fox News infuriating report on Hastert and some Democrat in PA got my blood boiling and again reminded me that McCain has a homerun issue in earmarks.
This is not the James Johnson whom Obama knew.
Good job, Anthony. You beat him to that line.
Better make some room for Johnson under that bus.
Why is it always the press, according to the Right, that dumps on McCain when in fact the media love him.
essentially what you are saying is that both candidates have ties of one or another kind at one or another time to lobbyists. It may well be time the nation does something about the lobbyists. They seem in charge of our nation.
“Why would Obama select someone so obviously at odds with his New Politics image?”
Hahahaha! Stop, stop, you’re killing me!
David, David. The media are much more fond of McCain than they were of Bush or of most other Republicans, but that’s not the same as an equivalence. Go down to your local library and just look at the cover photos of Time and Newsweek for the last 6 months. Imagine using them as illustrations for teaching a high-school course on manipulation.
Barack Obama is a mirage. His hopey-changey message is an Axelrod-created myth. Look at his past associations. Look at his voting record. He’s a party-line Democrat who’s being propped up as a centrist fence-builder. He even voted against Roberts! Of course he’s down in the sewers with these old-school political sleazeballs like Holder and Johnson — that’s just Chicago politics. You think Rezko was an accident?
**McCain has a home run in earmarks**
McCain is not exactly clean on government spending, not when he’s about to ram through the largest tax increase in the history of the world over glowball warmening… if he proudly claims to cut a billion in earmarks while passing a trillion dollar tax against the will of his own party and most Americans, he’s not hitting any home runs.
Inside baseball. It’s unlikely the MSM will even mention it. Even if they do it’s unlikely the electorate will care. Nothing is going to derail the Obama train.
I agree that the choice of Johnson is a mistake, albeit because he is a lightweight who can’t pick veeps for sh-t (Ferraro, Edwards). I imagine Caroline Kennedy, standing in for Ted, is doing alot of the heavy lifting on this (suspecting, as K. Jean Lopez at NRO does, that she will be rewarded with a Supreme Court seat), but what makes the Johnson choice really maddening is that the likes of George Mitchell certainly had enough free time to be on a committee like this, sitting in his place.
Who cares if he’s hanging with his multi-billion subprime mortgage homey! Did he introduce Rezko to Jimmy Johnson?
Goddddammmnnn Amerikkkka!!!! Obamma 08.
We can see in the VP selection committee a preview of an Obama administration. A lobbyist with questionable business practices, a lawyer with pardons-for-contributions history and a token payback to the Kennedy dynasty. Chicago politics at its worst.