A couple of articles today, one from the Seminal (mostly quoting Jonathan Alter) and one from Firedoglake, set me to thinking about a critical difference between Democrats and Republicans. Oddly enough, the contrast illustrates how each party is deficient, in contrasting ways.
Alter discusses the cave in by the Democrats on the FISA bill, and reveals that the House Democratic leadership (despite the fact that 80% of the caucus was against this obscene unconstitutional power grab) decided to go on vacation because:
The private excuse was that the liberal base wouldn’t be satisfied no matter what they did, and that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid couldn’t make the more conservative Senate go along anyway.
When they controlled the Congress the Republicans passed bad legislation precisely because the base wanted it; the Democrats pass bad legislation because they assume their base can’t be satisfied. One side panders to the extreme, the other side blows off the folks that put them in the majority.
And why, really, does this happen?
That’s touched on in the Firedoglake article. Our unlamented former Congressman, Rob Simmons, was a member of a potentially powerful group of Congressman. As alleged “moderate” Republicans, they potentially held the balance of power in the Congress. The potential went unrealized. They allowed themselves to be neutered on every major issue, and most if not all of the minor ones. The Democrats have a similar group or groups, known as the Blue Dog Caucus and the New Democrats. Either of these groups hold the balance of power in the Congress, just as (potentially) did Simmons and his ilk. The difference is that these folks exercise that power, effectively handing control of the Congress to the Republicans on a variety of issues. The leadership, which controls the calendar, could prevent the damage on bills like FISA by simply not bringing them to a vote. The FISA bill never even went through hearings so it could easily have been stalled for months by that expedient. Moreover, those hearings could have been used as an opportunity to make Bush put up or shut up by requiring that he come clean about what he’s been doing. Nonetheless, it was the Blue Dogs and the New Democrats that delivered the bill to Bush. The Republicans completely cowed their “moderates”; the Democrats have no control over their conservatives at all.
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