The National Rifle Association (NRA) has leverage with House Democrats running for reelection in conservative districts, and its decision to score the Eric Holder contempt vote (in favor of it) will complicate Minority Whip Steny Hoyer’s attempts to keep Democrats united in opposition (h/t HotAir):
“I think there are some members that will consider the recommendations of the NRA,” Hoyer said to reporters today. “Whether they think those recommendations are founded or not, I don’t know at this point.”
The number of Democratic defections could reach 31, according to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), whose committee voted last Wednesday to move the contempt citation to a full House vote.
Issa cites a letter sent from 31 Democrats to the Obama administration last year asking for them to be forthcoming with details of the Fast and Furious gun-walking operation as a template for possible Democratic “yes” votes.
So far, Rep. Matheson is the first Democratic defector. Getting 31 Democrats to cross the aisle still seems like a long-shot for Issa, but the NRA scoring will certainly help. The lobbying group does appear to have had some interest or involvement in the Fast and Furious letter Issa mentions that had 31 Democratic signatories last year, since it was posted on the NRA website under “media.” If the Democrats lose 31 members on this vote, their argument that the GOP is using it as a ploy to tie Holder’s hands on voting rights becomes even more absurd.
The NRA, meanwhile, outlined its justification for scoring the vote in a recent letter to House GOP leadership, making the case that this is about gun rights, not partisanship (h/t Moe Lane):
It is no secret that the NRA does not admire Attorney General Holder. For years, we have pointed out his history of anti-Second Amendment advocacy and enforcement actions. Since taking office, Attorney General Holder has seized on the violence in Mexico to promote the lie that “90 percent” of firearms used in Mexican crime come from the U.S.; to call for bringing back the 1994 Clinton gun ban; and to justify the illegal multiple sales reporting scheme, which amounts to gun registration for honest Americans who buy long guns in southwest border states.
But our support of this contempt resolution is not about those issues — nor is it a partisan decision, for we have also expressed our strong policy disagreements with Attorney General Holder’s predecessors of both parties. The reason we support the contempt resolution is the same reason we first called for Attorney General Holder’s resignation more than a year ago: the Department’s obstruction of congressional oversight of a program that cost lives in support of an anti-gun agenda.
Hoyer will try his best to keep his party in line, but the election is a little more than four months away, and some Democrats won’t be able to afford being on the wrong side of the NRA.
At least for some Democrats voting to hold Holder in Contempt will not be based on voting rights or race or even abortion. I’d call that progress, though perhaps not progressive.
"If the Democrats lose 31 members on this vote, their argument that the GOP is using it as a ploy to tie Holder’s hands on voting rights becomes even more absurd." Except that anyone dumb enough to swallow that has probably alread swallowed the long-accepted myth that the NRA is a racist organization. So the NRA support may bolster rather than reduce the smears. n nNever mind that the NRA was founded by Union officers after the Civil War. Never mind the Black members and board members. Never mind that the NRA helped a southern Black pastor arm and train his flock to defend themselves against armed and violent KKK in the pre-Cvil Rights Act days, when Blacks in the south had little access to military arms, law enforcement protection, or the justice system. The left does not like the NRA, and that is enough by definition to make it a racist organization.
"Attorney General Holder has seized on the violence in Mexico to promote the lie that “90 percent” of firearms used in Mexican crime come from the U.S." n nFolks, this is what is really behind all of this — and I am not sure that F&F really was an accident. Instead, the "accident" was that ATF got linked to the guns walking across the border in what might have been a really corrupt effort to simply increase Mexican violence to pressure folks to impose gun control in America. THAT would be enough for Obama to be scared and to be doing what he is to back Holder….
That, sir, is bulldust. Have you actualyl looked up why the guns "walk" across the border? It's because the ATF officials under Holder's jurisdiction ask local prosecutors to prosecute under existing US law – and the local prosecutors refuse to do so. This is for a variety of reasons – slim prospects of conviction, difficulty of gaining/admitting evidence or witness intimidation – but most commonly because the local Republican prosecutors simply don't feel like enforcing the law.
If Eric Holder is held in contempt of Congress, then what? n n In southeast Pennsylvania, the right to own and bear arms, to defend oneself as an unalienable right of individual dignity, the NRA scoring does not mean much but it does mean something to Rep. Critz in southwest Pennsylvania where Democrats are proud of their guns and openly display them. You know the kind…they cling to their guns and their because they are stupid, racist, homophobic, misogynist bigots. n nI had not been following this but it seems pretty clear that Fast and Furious was designed to entrap gun sellers in the US and not Mexican drug cartel criminals.
It would have been except they let the guns "walk" across the border and become lost. Some 2000 of them, that we know about. And some of these have been recovered at assorted crime scenes — and that is the issue here.
Issa's a creep and a criminal and he's been flogging this non-issue as if it were his last chance to grab a ride on the money train. nI don't like Holder at all, but even he's not the sleaze that Issa is.