About the "blue dogs" - on the one hand I wonder what good do we get

[question everything]

from them, whether we should have encouraged them to run and thus winning if we cannot pass important bills, if they end up humiliating the President.

On the other hand, their masses allow us to control the committees, to control the agenda so..

Sigh.

[damntexdem]

1. If they get their crap passed, the Dem's 'control' of the committees will be a negative.

It would be the Dems' fault that a bill were passed that would make healthcare worse in this country.

[onenote]

2. here's an example of the good we get from blue dogs

Going down the alphabetical list, I picked the first blue dog I could find that defeated a republican -- Jason Altmire, who took the fourth district of Pennsylvania from Melissa Hart in 2006 (she had held the seat since 2001). He's a pretty classic Blue Dog -- he votes the Democratic party position around 88 percent of the time, which is relatively low. On the other hand, look at what you'd have if he had lost to Hart: a repub who votes the repub party line 94 percent of the time. A rabid right to lifer and stem cell research opponent (Altmire voted for stem cell research and gets a 24 percent rating from the National right to life committee, which is more than I'd like to see from a Democrat, but a boat load of an improvement over Hart who was a 100 percenter.

So,given the choice, I'd take Altmire over Hart every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

[question everything]

3. Thanks. Good to know that they are useful. Sometimes

Actually I've read an op-ed, on the WSJ, I think, of someone "exposing" the Blue Dogs as not as fiscally conservatives as they claim to be, since they voted for the stimulus package.

Of course, Bush's rubber stamps in Congress have no stand on being fiscally conservatives.