Who Let the Blue Dogs Out?

Peter Suderman | July 24, 2009

On health-care reform, it seems Henry Waxman is irritated that Blue Dog Democrats won't just shut their mouths and get with the program. The allegedly deficit-averse wing of the party, meanwhile, almost seems as if it's operating as a de facto separate party from its more liberal brethren. Fox News reports:

A key House committee chairman on Friday threatened to roll over moderate Democrats who are holding up the health care reform bill and bring the package straight to the floor.

 

The statement underscored the deep divisions the health care reform debate is causing in the ranks of the Democratic Party.

Fiscally conservative Blue Dogs are holding up the bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee over cost concerns and other issues. But Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., on Friday accused those Democrats of empowering Republicans.

"I won't allow them to turn over control of the committee to the Republicans," Waxman said, threatening to bypass the committee process.

"I don't see what alternative we have," Waxman said of talks that have raged for days with the Blue Dogs. "This can't be an interminable discussion."

 

Au contraire, Mr. Waxman, this is Washington, where gab is not a gift but a requirement for residence, and largely stagnant policy-reform discussions can span careers, perhaps even lifetimes. Interminable discussion is one of the central features of our nation's politics, as American as baseball, apple pie, and blaming the president for giving your daughter syphilis. And the Blue Dogs are just doing their part to exercise the natural right of all elected officials to flaunt their petty powers and convey their own self-importance through long-winded deliberations. 

And in the process, they're chipping away at the chances for blockbuster liberal health-care reform. If it fails, Blue Dog opposition will be a significant, perhaps even the primary, reason why. Contrary to what Obama says about Republican opposition, which has been consistently unfocused and unhelpful, it's factional squabbling within the Democratic party that's dragging the bill down. If Democrats lose this one, they'll only have themselves to blame. 

John Stossel wrote about the arrogance of impatient health-care reformers here. 

Comments

Tomcat1066|7.24.09 @ 2:43PM|#

Wasn't it Obama who was wetting his pants over the Republicans "playing politics", but now Waxman claims he'll run over the Blue Dogs for not getting with the program?

Fuck Waxman!

pig-man|7.24.09 @ 2:43PM|#

oink oink squeal

|7.24.09 @ 2:47PM|#

Fuck Waxman!

I believe the lackluster track record in that regard is the key to understanding the entire situation.

Will Rogers|7.24.09 @ 2:48PM|#

I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.

Tomcat1066|7.24.09 @ 2:52PM|#

I believe the lackluster track record in that regard is the key to understanding the entire situation.

Point taken.

But I'd kick in a couple bucks to get him a hooker, just so he can get rid of that tension and stop being a dipshit. I know anyone who sleeps with him would want substantial payment like the chick Eliot Spitzer was banging, but would actually look more like some chickenhead who normally gets paid in cigarettes, but look at him...can he really afford to be that picky?

|7.24.09 @ 2:52PM|#

"And the Blue Dogs are just doing their part to exercise the natural right of all elected officials to flaunt their petty powers and convey their own self-importance through long-winded deliberations."


Or maybe they are nervous about passing a huge and currently unpopular bill with virtually no diliberation or idea of what is actually in it. Jesus Peter, you are worse than Weigel.

+|7.24.09 @ 2:53PM|#

Fiscally conservative Blue Dogs

Names, please? I just might have to send them flowers.

|7.24.09 @ 2:54PM|#

Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., on Friday accused those Democrats of empowering Republicans.

Wait- Waxman is more concerned with party labels than with effective policiy?

That can't be right; he was misquoted, or something.

|7.24.09 @ 2:59PM|#

Maybe that whole "This is too big and important to discuss, or even think about!" approach to passing laws is slowly, painfully drawing to an unmourned end.

|7.24.09 @ 3:00PM|#

Waxman is more frightening to me than a visit from the Cenobites. He is horror made flesh.

|7.24.09 @ 3:03PM|#

"policiy"

stupid keyboard

Mike M.|7.24.09 @ 3:05PM|#

The nerve of those moderate Democrats, listening to their constituents who voted for them instead of the socialists!

|7.24.09 @ 3:06PM|#

And, yes, Waxman does look like something which lives in a secret subterranean cavern beneath your home, and slinks surreptitiously out at night to drink your blood, and groom his nose hairs with your toothbrush.

ChrisO|7.24.09 @ 3:14PM|#

This is nothing more than a replay of Hillarycare. Ultimately, it wasn't Republicans who killed that off, but a group of somewhat sane Democrats who realized they'd have to face the wrath of their constituents if it passed.

Of course, Republicans were the beneficiaries in the next election, just as they will be next year.

|7.24.09 @ 3:15PM|#

I believe he is nothing but nose hair in various shades and densities.

Cabeza de Vaca|7.24.09 @ 3:17PM|#

The doctor should have done the humane thing & ended the abomination as soon as it was born. Because he didn't have the courage to do what must be done we all suffer.

|7.24.09 @ 3:18PM|#

"Jesus Peter, you are worse than Weigel"

No. Peter is just a boy.

Gilbert Martin|7.24.09 @ 3:35PM|#

I don't care who gets credit for killing the monstrosity, just as long as it DOES get killed.

alan|7.24.09 @ 3:36PM|#

Waxman, take a look in the mirror, what do you see? Yeah, that's it, keep looking. Look again, don't glance away. Look in the mirror. Now look down at the straight razor. See it gleam? Look at yourself again, now back at the razor. You know you wanna do it. Go ahead. It wont hurt anymore.

kilroy|7.24.09 @ 3:44PM|#

Where the hell did this "Blue Dog" terminology come from? Are there Red Cats? Green Monkeys? WTF?

Rich|7.24.09 @ 3:45PM|#

> Maybe that whole "This is too big and important to discuss, or even think about!" approach to passing laws is slowly, painfully drawing to an unmourned end.

As long as it is not replaced by the emergency executive order approach.

alan|7.24.09 @ 3:56PM|#

kilroy | July 24, 2009, 3:44pm | #
Where the hell did this "Blue Dog" terminology come from? Are there Red Cats? Green Monkeys? WTF?

Democrats, particularly in the South, back in the day when FDR, Truman and the like were building the party into America's left leaning establishment party, and they still had ill feelings to the party of Lincoln would declare, 'I'd vote for a blue dog before I would vote for a gawd danged Republican.'

Hence, it stuck to mean an old line type of Democrat (basically a segregationist) and evolved to mean a right leaning Democrat over time.

kilroy|7.24.09 @ 4:27PM|#

Thanks, alan.

|7.24.09 @ 5:34PM|#

Democrats, particularly in the South, back in the day when FDR, Truman and the like were building the party into America's left leaning establishment party, and they still had ill feelings to the party of Lincoln would declare, 'I'd vote for a blue dog before I would vote for a gawd danged Republican.'

Not quite right. The original term was "yellow dog Democrat," referring to someone who would vote straight-ticket Democrat just because of Lincoln's war. Blue dog Democrat was coined by a conservative Democrat who wanted to be a Yellow Dog Democrats but complained that he was "choked blue" from the left wing of the party pulling him left and making it difficult for him to continue to be party-line (and not betray his Confederate ancestors, roughly)

alan|7.24.09 @ 7:09PM|#

Thanks, JT. Sorry my facts were a little off, kilroy. Relying from memory and raised at my grandmam's blue dog/yellow dog knees.

One curious statement on the wiki page for the Blue Dog Coalition is this: The Blue Dogs are viewed by some as a continuation of the socially conservative wing of the Democratic party prominent during the presidency of Harry S Truman.
I've always considered Truman's unpopularity for the Korean War, union and steel policies to be the first big break the Republicans caught in the South since Reconstruction.

Ebeneezer Scrooge|7.25.09 @ 2:01AM|#

Where the hell did this "Blue Dog" terminology come from? Are there Red Cats? Green Monkeys? WTF?

As long as it gives Obama a serious case of political blue balls, I could care less.

Ebeneezer Scrooge|7.25.09 @ 2:03AM|#

Jesus Peter, you are worse than Weigel.

Is that possible?