Free Republic

A blowup between the Senate and conservative House Democrats has derailed a package of tax cuts, including tax incentives for renewable-energy production, which Democratic leaders hoped to count as a major accomplishment. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) bluntly told Democratic Senate leaders to show some backbone and stand up to Republicans who oppose the House version of the tax package, which includes offsets. “We’ve been willing to compromise on everything, but not on fiscal sanity. That is why we ask Senate Democrats to stand up to the Republican minority,” said Hoyer. But Senate Democrats fired back at their Democratic...

Pushing conservative Democrats out of Congress could help the party stand up to the GOP. Jul. 29, 2008 | In American politics, exceedingly few positions generate overwhelming agreement across the ideological spectrum. Even propositions that ought to be uncontroversial -- such as whether there is scientific evidence for evolution or whether Saddam Hussein personally planned the 9/11 attacks -- produce sizable portions of the citizenry lined up on each side. One notable exception to this rule is the issue of whether the current U.S. Congress is doing a poor job. That question produces a remarkable consensus that is close to...

Reid Wilson of Real Clear Politics had a column yesterday, "Dems finding success in the center" about how democrats have been having success winning House seats by recruiting "conservative" democrat candidates, and they were following the model again in 2008. While it is true that the democrat party has had success in executing this tactic, this success is due more to their ability to fool the public about these candidates than anything else. Wilson mentioned a few members such as John Barrow of Georgia and Heath Shuler of North Carolina (perhaps better known in the South for his college football...

Among the many dark tidings for American conservatism, there is one genuine bright spot. Over the past five years, a group of young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers has emerged on the scene. These writers came of age as official conservatism slipped into decrepitude. Most of them were dismayed by what the Republican Party had become under Tom DeLay and seemed put off by the shock-jock rhetorical style of Ann Coulter. As a result, most have the conviction — which was rare in earlier generations — that something is fundamentally wrong with the right, and it needs to be fixed. Moreover,...

Blue Dogs look beyond '08 electionBy PATRICK O'CONNOR | 6/11/08 4:50 AM EST Democrat Jim Cooper is focused on the federal government’s swelling financial obligations. Photo: John Shinkle Rep. Jim Cooper never misses a chance to talk about the federal government’s swelling financial obligations. But the Tennessee Democrat clams up when asked about a conversation he had on the topic with his party’s likely presidential nominee, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. “I’ll let his campaign speak to his position on this issue,” Cooper says. Cooper’s silence is understandable: Although the party that takes power next year will have to address deficit...

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...

The single most important piece of national security legislation -- legislation that if ignored will put American lives at great risk -- languishes in the House because “Blue Dog” Democrats have apparently decided to abandon their campaign promises to be strong on national security and kowtow to Nancy Pelosi. On Jan 28, twenty-one Blue Dogs signed a letter urging Speaker Pelosi to move forward with bi-partisan FISA legislation in the House in the same form that had passed the Senate in October. “The Rockefeller-Bond FISA legislation contains satisfactory language addressing all these issues and we would fully support that measure...

No, not the lesson the national press is pushing, that Mr. Jenkins's loss is a sign of GOP disaster this fall, or that it demonstrates how difficult it will be for Republicans to link local competitors to the liberal Mr. Obama. Republicans face tough odds, yes. But that's because they've yet to prove they've learned a lesson, as they demonstrated again with Mr. Jenkins. By the lazy standards of the GOP, Mr. Jenkins should've been a cinch to win a Baton Rouge district in Republican hands for 34 years, and that President Bush won with 59% in 2004. Their candidate...

For more than two months, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has denied members of that chamber the opportunity to vote on one of the most important pieces of national security legislation before Congress this year. That legislation is a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate in February that would grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies which helped the government monitor terrorist communications after September 11. So, House Republicans, led by Reps. Vito Fossella and Peter King of New York, are seeking to get around this obstructionism by employing a "discharge petition." If 218 House members sign the petition, the House would...

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), the House Democrats’ point man in negotiations on an overhaul of intelligence surveillance law, is keeping his eye on conservative Blue Dog Democrats who might defect on the issue under Republican pressure. The topic has reached a critical point because surveillance orders granted by the director of national intelligence and the attorney general under the authority of the Protect America Act begin to expire in August. If Congress does not approve an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by Memorial Day, intelligence community officials will have to prepare dozens of individual surveillance warrants,...

[Printable source] When Democrats swept the 2006 midterm elections, several freshman House Democrats won on conservative platforms. A number of these so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats hail from districts that President Bush carried at least once. But the House belongs to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, not to Bush, and the Blue Dogs have caught on quickly. On almost every issue, the freshman Blue Dogs have failed to advance their campaign agendas, which were carefully tailored to their moderate constituencies. From the war on terror, to taxes and the budget, to immigration and free trade, the Blue Dogs may talk tough, but they're...

The primary thus far has been a deservedly hellish experience for presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and things are only going to get worse. But what should the nation expect from a “congenital liar” and a Centrist imposter who represent a Democratic Party so much dominated by Liberals that its Congressional Moderates and Conservatives could hold their meetings in a cloakroom that doubles as the Blue Dog Democrat Clubhouse.

There is something strange going on in the progressive blogosphere these days: instead of uniting against Republicans, progressive bloggers like Matt Stoller have decided to declare war on every Democrat who they consider not to be progressive (read anti-war) enough. Seemingly frustrated that there are actually Democratic Congressmen that do not necessarily always vote along party lines - but make up their own minds - they have decided to ask their readers to make profiles of so-called "Bush Dogs" (Blue Dogs and New Democrats) as to be able to target them in the coming years, and to replace them with...

A high-stakes budget showdown is shaping up this fall between President Bush and Congressional Democrats. The debate will also be a moment of truth for the so-called "blue dog" Democrats: the 48 self-described fiscal conservatives in the House Democratic Caucus. The bone of contention is the $22 billion in domestic spending that Democrats passed in their budget resolution above what Mr. Bush requested in his own budget. The Democratic spending plan would increase non-defense expenditures by 6.5% next year--more than double the inflation rate. The White House is threatening vetoes if Democrats pass spending bills above Mr. Bush's limit, which...

A leading liberal blogger has declared political war against centrist Democrats – the latest move in an intensifying show of dissatisfaction with the Democratic Congress by the once-friendly blogosphere. Matt Stoller, who blogs at the well-trafficked OpenLeft.com, has compiled a list of 38 House “Blue Dog” Democrats who have voted with Republicans on key legislation, and called on the activist community to put pressure on them – and perhaps challenge them in primaries – if they fail to shape up. “Some of these members may need to face a primary challenge, and it's useful for potential primary challengers to know...

Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar is today fond of quoting a famous Lyndon Johnson line: "You know the difference between cannibals and liberals? Cannibals only eat their enemies." Mr. Cuellar would know, having found himself the main course on liberals' election menu just last year. A centrist Democrat who is pro-business, free-trade and strong on law enforcement, the congressman was designated an apostate by the left-wing Netroots crowd. They decamped to his district and bankrolled a liberal primary challenger. Mr. Cuellar triumphed, though Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas would later swagger on his blog: "So we didn't kill off Cuellar. But...

For the first time during 110th Congress, the Blue Dog Coalition — a 47-member grouping of self-described moderate and conservative Democrats — defied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership on a critical national security issue: Saturday night's vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), where 41 dissident Democrats, nearly all of them Blue Dogs, provided the margin of victory for President Bush on the issue of terrorist surveillance. Thanks to the Blue Dogs, the administration's commonsense proposal to clarify that FISA permits U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor telephone calls made by foreign terrorist suspects outside the United...

The immigration reform bill has helped to fashion a hybrid brand of politics. By reaching across political lines, the proposed measure pairs normally conflicting ideologies of political thought in a common bond. Some old-line Congressional Republicans (such as Trent Lott) and new RINOs (such as Lindsay Graham) are accepting amnesty for illegal immigrants while some moderate Democrats appeared almost conservative by opposing the bill and rallying for hard line border security instead. The Blue Dogs -- the moderate Democrats elected in 2006 -- are lining up to help slow -- or even stop -- the bill. The Bush-McCain-Kennedy compromise bill...

The Democrats' ability to maintain control of Congress may rest on freshman lawmakers in Republican-leaning districts. June 8, 2007; Page A1 TOPEKA, Kan. -- Freshman Rep. Nancy Boyda of Kansas recently joined 95 Republican lawmakers signing a letter attacking amnesty for illegal immigrants. She remains opposed to gun control even in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. And she touts her credentials as a decades-long Republican. Today, the 51-year-old Ms. Boyda is a Democrat. But you often wouldn't know it as she gears up to run for re-election in November 2008. With Republicans aggressively attacking her, and two Republicans...

Sheikh Majd Suleiman, head of the Al-Duleim tribes in Al-Anbar, has accused Al-Qaeda in Iraq of "fighting the residents of the country, not the Americans" and called the organization "a cancer in our land." He added that in light of the indiscriminate attacks that Al-Qaeda had carried out, the tribes in Al-Anbar had decided to fight against it.