Posted on 07/23/2008 7:07:04 AM PDT by ZGuy
Republican Senate leaders — terrified by the prospect of losing five or more seats in November — have freed their members to vote however they need to vote to get reelected, even if that means bucking the president or the party’s leadership.
On at least four votes over the past month — Medicare, housing, the GI Bill and the Farm Bill — Republican leaders haven’t even bothered whipping members to toe the party line or back President Bush’s veto threats. Instead, a GOP leadership aide says leaders have told vulnerable senators that it’s all right to “get well” with voters by siding with Democrats on anything but energy and national security.
It’s unusual for rank-and-file members to get a green light to blow off their party leaders. But these are unusual times for Republicans. They are genuinely worried they could get their clocks cleaned in November. The prevailing attitude: It is better to lose some big votes now than big races in November.
This helps explain why so many Senate Republicans are taking flight from President Bush and their own leaders — and doing it loudly and proudly.
Shortly after the Medicare vote, the website for Sen. John Cornyn featured news that the Texas Republican — best known as a Bush loyalist — had voted to override the president’s veto.
In a brief conversation with POLITICO, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) openly discussed how Vice President Cheney had personally asked him about his Medicare vote. Chambliss said he told the vice president that he needed to back his local doctors and senior citizens.
“I said, ‘Dick, I’m beyond that,’” Chambliss said. Cheney’s “my good friend and my hunting buddy, but my mind was made up.” Asked whether Republican Senate leaders had whipped the Medicare vote, Chambliss said he hadn’t been pressured.
Both Chambliss and Cornyn are up for reelection, and both were hammered back home over the Fourth of July recess by the American Medical Association lobby on the Medicare bill.
An aide to a Republican senator who voted to override the veto said, “Republican leadership wrote us off from the get-go. We were never whipped on this. Leadership just left us alone.” Another GOP leadership aide said leaders didn’t bother whipping the housing bill, because only a small cadre of conservatives were opposed to it.
Senate Republican leaders argue that some votes have been so lopsided — 70-26 on Medicare, 84-12 on a procedural step on the housing bill — because Democrats, searching for compromise, removed some of the most objectionable items from their bills. Indeed, Democrats have crafted narrower bills on housing, energy and even Iraq war funding in an effort to lure GOP support and build their legislative résumé heading into the fall.
Still, this trend in Senate voting represents a stark contrast to the first 18 months of the 110th Congress, which were defined by razor-thin partisan votes in the Senate and a near-daily blame game over the use of the filibuster.
“It looks like after months of hanging together with their leaders, they’re beginning to have an every-man-for-himself attitude,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “They started the year with a strategy of doing everything they could to grind the Senate to a halt. What’s changing now is we’re getting closer to the election.”
With the apparent freedom to vote their consciences — or at least their states’ consciences — even members of the GOP leadership team have gone separate ways on certain issues.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) voted against the Medicare veto override, but two other GOP leaders, Cornyn and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) — vice chairman and chairman, respectively, of the Senate Republican Conference — voted in favor of the override. On a housing bill procedural vote, McConnell voted yes, but Kyl voted no.
On a Medicare amendment sponsored by conservative rabble-rouser Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), McConnell, Kyl and Cornyn backed DeMint, but Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), also part of the GOP leadership, went the other way.
“I don’t think you can infer from that that we’re not going to come together and block bad bills,” Cornyn said. “I think Medicare was a special case.”
But on virtually all of these mixed votes, it’s not a case of McConnell and Kyl losing control of their conference and losing major votes. In fact, GOP leaders are allowing for political expedience to trump partisan stalemate.
By letting politically vulnerable GOP senators such as Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Susan Collins of Maine, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Gordon Smith of Oregon join Democrats on key issues, Republicans are neutralizing the issues.
Now these senators can head home and brag that they stood up to Republican leaders in Washington and voted to save Medicare from cuts, to expand GI benefits and to help out in the housing crisis.
Republican leadership aides point to the fact that the GOP has been unified on its top two issues right now: national security and energy.
“On energy, you’ve seen Democrats coming over to our side and not the other way around,” said McConnell spokesman Don Stewart. “On national security, it’s the Democrats who have been doing the jailbreak.”
On the last major national security vote — the expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — it was the Democrats who were divided, with 21 voting for the bill and 28 voting against it. The Democratic leadership stuck together in opposition.
For Republicans, the next opportunity for independence will come by the end of this week, when the Senate takes its final votes on the oil speculation bill. Although the GOP leadership has been whipping energy votes generally, this one puts Republicans in a difficult spot: between voting for a measure they don’t much like — Republicans want a broader bill that includes drilling, conservation and electric car production — or risking being tagged as a friend of Big Oil.
I wish these idiots would learn to look farther than the next election.
So, if the GOP is scrambling for lifeboats, who is the captain of the ship? Oh, that’s right...Mr. President is. Thanks a lot George < /sarc >
So now we have the choice of democrats and democrat lite...make me want to vote.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
My Mom used to call this, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” She was pretty adamant that it never solved the problem, in fact made it worse.
With the left firmly entrenched in Congress and possibly the White House, 2009 will be known as the year where we witnessed the beginning of the death of the republic.
“have freed their members to vote however they need to vote to get reelected, even if that means bucking the president or the party’s leadership.”
This little morsel explains most of our problems with these fools in D.C.
I’m archiving this one for the next time someone argues with me when I say there’s no difference between the two parties. It’s all about power — and those bozos will sell their daughters to keep it.
Just amazing... Few, if any, have principles on which they stand...
This is the problem with Republicans. How about just doing what is right for the country and putting your own re-election down the list a bit? Having a backbone and standing up will get you what you want.
leaders have told vulnerable senators that it’s all right to “get well” with voters by siding with Democrats on anything but energy and national security.
They always think the answer is to lean further left......idiots, and they deserve to lose.
Cowards.
The upcoming election is not going to be good for Republicans.
History is always on the side of the aggressor. In this case, the Dems from 2004 on have decided to purge the "moderates" and go on offense 100% of the time, hence they are "winning" right now. But as soon as they actually have to LIVE with a policy they vote in, things change. They are already starting to change with their energy policies---only our side hasn't yet figured out that the Dems are on the wrong side of this.
Neo-libertarians make me sick. They want to hide behind the rubric of "they're all alike," but never, ever have to make hard choices by actually governing---because they can't get elected. Thank you Bob Barr, who just endorsed ALGORE!!!
Haven’t they pretty much been doing this all along????
So once again principle goes out the window with the GOP.
FU Saxby. Made your mind up huh? Just like your amnesty bill you sleazy weasel? I am tempted to vote for your worthless dem opponent just to vent my spleen.
How about actually espousing conservative values?
FSM's picture is a parody on the Christian fish logo. Nothing wrong with that (I've got one on my car), but it's not a political symbol at all.
What a remarkable concept...vote the way the people who sent you to the Senate want you to vote!!! Well who in the world would have thought of anything so unique?! Rather than screwing your constituents and the nation, stealing their money and lining your pockets with it, cast votes based upon what is best for the nation and the rights and liberties of the American people. NAH, it’ll never catch on.
Here in NC Elizabeth Dole will probably lose. Her opponent is a complete airhead commie and should be easy to beat but Dole is more interested in the DC party circuit.
Conservatives will have to comeback and fight another day.
Isn’t that what congress is supposed to do?...vote as we want, not as their party dictates?
The McCain Effect. Drop your principals if you still have any and swim to the left where the voters are. If you can’t pick them out, just use the giant Obamessiah image on the horizon as your guide.
Me, too.
That dirtbag’s office lied to me during the amnesty flap.
Seems like Pelosi and Obam-Lama-Ding-Dong are running the country.
Foreign policy anyway.
Traitors to conservatives and the GOP, laughing away.
Don’t worry about the headline — liberal lamestream ABCNNBCBS!
Reality bites.
It is probably too little, way too late.
The GOP/RNC should have been making changes (to the right, instead of to the left) since 2004 and especially after their derrieres were handed to them in 2006.
So, they nominated McCain and now have to reach way across the aisle, if they have even a whisper of a chance.
Hmmm.... But you know, this IS TO BE EXPECTED from anything related to politics....
my big question is What about US?... The Voters?....Should we not show some BACKBONE and help throw the SOBs out of office? How can we blame them for treating us like IDOTS, when we act like brainless, yes, idiots? that don't learn... That can be swayed easily... Why should we be respected at all?
I wish voters would learn to look farther than the false promises made to them by politicians.
Then maybe we'd get some competent legislators in office instead of ingenuine panders.
Congress' approval rating would seem to indicate that people are sick of politicians not delivering on their promises, and in most cases not really making any genuine effort to deliver on most of those promises.
However, voters don't yet seem to have figured out that the reason is that what they are promising simply isn't achievable, especially through more government regulation and socialist policies.
So we are probably going to have to wait until liberals and RINOs make a much worse mess of things, and then maybe we will have a real conservative revolt. Right now we seem to be having a liberal revolt against what have been mostly liberal policies getting us where we are now.
"Do whatever you have to do, say whatever you have to say to fool the suckers one more time. They are too stupid to compare what you say now to what you did the last 6 years. We can get back to business as usual after we get re-elected."
You gutless creeps, you spineless Republican congresspersons panicking about your own nests rather than representing the people who elected you. How do you look in the mirror? A pox on all your houses (and senates).
Colonel, USAFR
BUT, if voting for these noble goals jeopardizes their seats, they will vote against them, and that includes energy and national defense, despite what they have been told.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda...That needs to be the GOP’s dying last words.
1)For smaller government
2)A fair tax
Individual Liberties
Some yes, not all. There is a core of about 20 conservatives who have been incredibly heroic. And not a peep from you about them.
The headline is from Politico.
Some years back the Readers Digest had a short article called "The Vanishing American".
The term "Yankee" south of the Mason-Dixon line meant any Northerner. In the North it meant someone from New England. In New England it meant someone from Vermont. In Vermont it meant anyone who ate pie on Sunday.
The Republican Party and those 20 conservatives are at the New England stage.
I'll vote for ANY conservative of whatever party but I'll be damned if I'll blindly vote for the GOP "no matter what". The GOP has abandoned it's base and those 20 stalwart better start looking for a new home.
Here's the latest ream job by a Republican - and watch how many vote for it.
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