Hullabaloo

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

 
Blue on Blue

by digby


Here's some more of that hot dog-on-dog action:

Blue Dog Democrats, frustrated that their fight to end deficit spending has been stymied by the Senate, may endorse candidates running for the upper chamber.

Leaders of the group told The Hill on Wednesday that they are considering plans to formally back and contribute to Senate candidates running in November.

“I expect you could see the Blue Dog PAC get involved in some Senate races this year,” said Blue Dog Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.).

“We’re never going to restore fiscal discipline to our government until we get more Blue Dogs elected to Republican Senate seats."

Here's the problem. These people supposedly believe in "fiscal responsibility." But, as Democrats in a Democratically led congress, they are completely ineffectual at stopping Republican tax cuts or raising taxes, but remarkably effective at stopping Democratic spending programs. Heads they win, tails we lose. They are completely useless at anything except making the liberal agenda impossible to enact.

And strangely enough, the fiscal hawks always seem to become newsworthy as powerful kingmakers and important players when Democrats are about to take power and have a lot of work to do to clean up after a Republican spending spree. We certainly haven't been reading a lot about the need "fiscal responsibility" over the past eight years. Suddenly the whole Village is buzzing about it.

“We’re interested in getting some like-minded people in the Senate,” Tanner said.

[...]

A Blue Dog senator would be a first, but Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), a conservative Democrat who was governor of right-leaning Indiana from 1989 to 1997, noted that there have already been several attempts at centrist coalitions in the Senate. He said he would consider joining another.

“Over the years there have been efforts to establish centrist … groups here,” Bayh said. “It’s never been as formal or as lasting as the Blue Dogs, but obviously the more like-minded members that we have — centrists, pragmatists — the greater the potential for something like that to occur with me. I’m not interested in joining an organization just to join something, but if there’s actually a potential for practical results? Absolutely. We need more of that around here.”

You can certainly understand why a pragmatic Democrat like Bayh would be in favor of such a thing. After all, for the last decade or so the place has been run by a bunch of wild-eyed, liberal ideologues who are putting up roadblocks to raising taxes to pay for popular programs. That's the ticket.

Endorsed members get a $5,000 donation from the PAC for the general election. But Blue Dog members also generally campaign for them and help them raise money.

Blue Dog staffers note that the idea of supporting Senate candidates has not even been brought before the Blue Dog PAC board, an 11-member panel that could then refer it to the full membership of the coalition.

The Blue Dogs certainly have the money. The Blue Dog PAC has doled out $790,000 this election cycle, and still has nearly $1.5 million in the bank.

You know, that isn't really all that impressive. Blue America raised more than 1.2 million in the last two election cycles (so far) and we're just a bunch of useless DFH's. I suspect that the lure of the Blue Dog has as much to do with certain "perks" provided by the big money special interests as the contributions themselves. And Villagers much prefer it if the elected representatives associate with the "right" people, so one must always be aware that taking contributions from DFH's has a certain taint. Still, money's money and if that's really what it's all about, then the netroots may be in a position to affect this more than they give us credit for. It could happen.


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digby 6/25/2008 08:30:00 PM |