Lawmaker News

According to the Washington Post, ratings for congressional Democrats are going down, down, down. Apparently, their base is unhappy with them because they haven’t done what they said they would do on Iraq: End the war.

But the poll numbers also show that less than 20 percent of the American people think we should pull out right now. So the Democrats lose either way. If they pass legislation to pull out now, they risk losing the people. And when they don’t, they lose their base. Not a good position to be in.

Democrats have a host of other problems. The indictment of Bill Jefferson and the new majority’s inability to make real progress on ethics reform (this is hardly the most ethical Congress in history, as promised by Speaker Pelosi) means they are beginning to lose the independents.   Read more...

Representative William Jefferson has allegedly been accused of 11 bribery and fraud schemes involving his business interests in at least seven West African countries, including telecommunications deals in Nigeria and Ghana, oil concessions in Equatorial Guinea, waste-recycling systems in Nigeria and the Nigerian sugar plant for which he sought Export-Import Bank financing. He made corrupt trades in his congressional office where he served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, to enrich himself and his family.

When Tom DeLay’s ethics were in question the Democrats triggered a round of attacks. However, whatever DeLay was guilty of, he bowed out gracefully. Jefferson, by contrast, is maintaining his innocence and has no intention of stepping down. As this federal indictment is the first in which a U.S. official is charged with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars bribery of foreign officials, Jefferson should take responsibility for these outrageous criminal behaviors. This not a party issue. Wrong is wrong and right is right no matter the party affiliation. However, I am a bit curious as to where the watchdog groups are in this matter.

Resign immediately, Congressman Jefferson, and stop this wasteful, selfish and continued abuse of taxpayers’ dollars.

So Cindy Sheehan has decided to “throw in the towel.” She is emotionally exhausted and politically frustrated at congressional Democrats for continuing to fund the Iraq war. She no longer wants to be seen as a leader of the anti-war movement and feels betrayed by the Democratic Party and other organizations that rallied behind her two years ago.

The Democratic-controlled House and Senate recently approved fresh billions for the Iraq war on Thursday, minus the troop withdrawal timeline that drew President Bush’s earlier veto. What Cindy is now beginning to understand is the Democrats do not want this war to end. To Sheehan, her crusade against this war was a matter of “right and wrong,” not “right or left.” As she stated, “I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a ‘tool’ of the Democratic Party. However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the ‘left’ started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used.” Read more...

In the early weeks of this new Democratic majority in Congress, the press releases coming out of the House Republican conference on most days were, to put it frankly, desperation wrapped in drama. Things started smoothly for the new kids in town and Republicans, still smarting from their loss of power, stopped just short of accusing Democrats of burning down the Capitol.

More than half a year later the Democrats are having a tough time in the majority, as any party does, and Republicans are finally feeling some relief. Their breathless press releases are beginning to sound true. From the sidelines Republicans find satisfaction watching as the majority struggles without a veto-proof vote block to change the war in Iraq, the anti-war left roughs them up, the much touted ethical clean-up crew gets hanged out to dry by their own Earmarker-in-Chief Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), and bills the house passed stall in the Senate or at the White House driveway under veto threat. Republicans are comforted too by their new liberation as they untether themselves from years of unconditionally granting the wishes of President Bush and paying the political price. Read more...

Imagine if King Arthur were to make a major decision, only to have his entire Roundtable vote against him.

That is what happened to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as she saw her entire leadership abandon her on the war spending vote yesterday night. She voted no. The majority leader, majority whip and Democratic Caucus chairman all voted yes.

Sounds like a major disconnect to me. I spent 15 years working in the Republican leadership, and I don’t ever recall having a Speaker be abandoned by every other top leadership member. Read more...

David Hill, director of Hill Research Consultants, a Texas-based firm that has polled for GOP candidates and causes since 1988, has a column posted on The Hill entitled "Overblown GOP apocalypse" in which he asserts the GOP isn't so bad off as the conservative bloggers and pundits would have you believe. Cases in point, he writes, are Florida and California.

"Consider Florida, where the newly elected Republican governor is already so popular that Floridians may forget about Jeb Bush. And the state legislature is dominated by the GOP. ... At the other end of the country, in California, you see a Republican Party that's bouncing back under the leadership of a suddenly stronger and more popular governor."

I've lived and worked in California (formerly as the communications director for the California Republican Party), and I can tell you things in the Golden State aren't all that rosy for the GOP. Consider that they lost Richard Pombo's congressional seat in a district where Republicans hold a registration advantage of 43%-37%. (In every other district, both congressional and legislative, in the state where Republicans hold at least 40% registration, they control the seat.)  Read more...

Has Jack been taken to Nancy's woodshed yet? Have they had the talk about how many more times she can stand to see images from that ABSCAM video the National Republican Congressional Committee is now so fond of?

The new majority, the one that promised to "drain the swamp" and be the most ethical in history, voted yesterday to protect both one of its own and the earmark system politicians depend on but have to pretend to hate. Democrats voted en masse (although ethics committee members voted present) to stop the GOP from censuring Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.) for his threat to block the appropriations of a member who had tried to eliminate one of his earmarks, a violation of ethics rules.

There is, of course, a long tradition of lawmakers yelling at and threatening each other on the House floor. But two things are notable here: 1) Murtha is a very close friend of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the one she unsuccessfully stuck her neck out for in an attempt to topple the majority leader last November and 2) Democrats are trying to become the party of ethics reform, something easier promised than delivered, as Pelosi is quickly learning. Read more...

My former boss, Rep. Denny Hastert (R-Ill.), is a wise man and a good political leader. One of his sayings he had when he was House Speaker was “Don’t set up too many mousetraps around the house.” After all, if you aren’t careful, you might trap yourself.

That is exactly what the new Democratic majority did this week. It caught one of its own, Rep. John Murtha (Pa.), in a clear violation of one its own rules that it trumpeted so loudly at the beginning of the year. The earmark rule might be stupid, as Murtha and his colleagues clearly think. The Democratic ethics reform package might be complete “crap,” as Murtha put it last year.

But the Democrats can’t call themselves the most ethical majority in history, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) likes to put it, and then create rules only to ignore them with reckless abandon. It’s kind of like passing a seatbelt law and then refusing to wear the seatbelt. Read more...

So now that the House Democrats have had about six months to figure out how to be in the majority, what do they do? Change the rules.

The test for germaneness has stood in the House for 185 years. But because the new majority has lost vote after vote (11 in all) on motions to recommit, they are seeking to change the test to make it harder for the minority to win.

This may seem like procedural mumbo-jumbo. But the rules of the House not only dictate how the laws of the land are made, they also indicate how secure the House majority is.

A majority leadership’s approach to the rules of the House quite often shows how well it is doing, how in touch it is with the people, how cohesive it is as a team, etc. Read more...

The title of this note is taken from Norman Mailer's famous essay about John Kennedy, which he wrote in 1960 during the Democratic National Convention. It remains one of the most brilliant political writings in history and I heartily recommend that anyone who has not read it should find it.

We will soon learn whether Harry Reid can play big-time poker with George Bush on the Iraq war, a subject to be discussed here soon.

For now, a standing ovation for the Speaker, the House Democratic Caucus, the Out Of Iraq Caucus, the Fighting Democrats in the House, and two Republicans who had the courage of their convictions, Walter Jones (N.C.) and Wayne Gilchrest (Md.). Read more...