OK. Let's put that to the test. I want you to list for me a single Congressmen who falls into that category. In the last individual Senatorial Approval ratings list I could find...
the man with the lowest rating still achieved a 36% approval rating (dem out of New Jersey). John McCain is probably the biggest RINO out there. Do you know what his approval rating among his constituents is? Currently 62%.
What you need to realize is that Congressmen serve their constituents first. They serve the people that can vote for them. If you refuse to vote (this is hypothetical mind you) in 2006 because you don't like what John McCain is doing, that doesn't hurt John McCain. He doesn't need your vote anyway. But it does hurt the man who represents you. Congressional politics are local. Sitting them out to make a point is a bit like burning down your own neighborhood. And congressmen are responding to their constituents. It just so happens, that 80% of their constituents aren't telling them what you think they are telling them.
But that is not what I was referring to. I was speaking of listening to the base on specific issues. No, reps are not listening to their particular constituents, they are stiffing them on issues those constituents care about most and accomodating them on secondary matters the reps themselves, and the national party leadership, doesn't give a darn about either way.
Funding a road or some minor bit of pork is a matter of complete indifference to the GOP nationals, so reps are free to give their constituents whatever they ask for. But on immigration, the president and leading presidential candidates want open borders, so 80% of the country being against them is irrelevant, they just vote for amnesty while spinning instead of voting for amnesty while crowing about it.
Same with CFR. Same with making tax cuts permanent. Same with overall control of spending. The national party tries to straddle their own base and what they imagine are possible vote pick-ups beyond the party, by accomodating leftist policies. They accomodate lobbyists. They accomodate cocktail hostesses and their PC nonsense. They try to get the commies at the NYT to award them Strange New Respect.
And every time they do (Bush pere taxes, anyone?), the base gets livid and chops their legs off at the knee. And they never learn, they always take it for granted as supposedly not having anywhere else to go, and appease it with a bare minimum on the major issues, and lots of useless trivialities on stuff nobody else on earth cares about. This season it is amnesty and trying to get illegals and those who hire them, to like them.
It's politically stupid, on a collosal scale. I don't want them to lose, but that is the direct effect of their pigheaded idiocy and stiffing of their own electoral base. If it gets us Hillary and inaction on Iran, it may just destroy civilization. But hey, K street and the hostesses will like them for their last few years, and who needs to be serious?
They will never grok that what media elites and Dems want them to do and consider high minded, enlightened, and responsible, is surrender our principles and their power, and give it back to the oh so high minded and enlightened Dems. Who will promptly surrender to every enemy of this country, foreign or domestic, they can find.