Are The Blue Dogs Really THAT Bad?

Yesterday my pal Jill Richardson posted about the how too many Democrats are falling for the carefully scripted conservative hysteria about deficits and austerity. Short version: their mania for wars and tax cuts for the wealthy (not to mention corporate welfare) drove our country's economy into a ditch and now it is the duty of the victims to buck up and take it like a man-- even if the victims are malnourished school children. Jill focused in-- and rightfully so-- on greasy Steny Hoyer. Today, as part of our 4th of July weekend, I'd like to spread that out a little with a look at Hoyer's allies, the Blue Dogs. Early today we looked at one particularly horrible Blue Dog-- perhaps the worst of all-- Oklahoma reactionary Dan Boren.

When the real Tea Party patriots sparked a revolution against the British monarchy, thousands of wealthy conservatives fled back to England. Even more went to the British West Indies and Canada. But not all. Alas, some conservatives stayed in America. Their ideological descendants are basically today's Republican Party-- plus conservatives in the Democratic Party, like Boren and his fellow Blue Dogs. The Blue Dogs didn't start as an official House caucus until 1994 when a bunch of southern reactionaries started meeting in the offices of Louisiana Democrats Billy Tauzin and Jimmy Hayes [each of whom, now sleazy K Street lobbyists, switched to the GOP the following year, a natural next step for any Blue Dog. Other right-wing and racist Democrats who jumped the fence at the same time include Nathan Deal (GA), Mike Parker (MS), Greg Laughlin (TX), followed later by Ralph Hall (TX) and Parker Griffith (AL)].

Of course 1994 wasn't really the beginning of the virulent Blue Dog strain, just the latest incarnation of the rebels who started the Civil War, founded the KKK, enforced a brutal and dehumanizing Jim Crow regime throughout the South, proudly called themselves Dixiecrats-- and stood in school doorways with ax-handles-- and then went under the boll weevil monicker. This morning I was reminded by Rick Perlstein in Nixonland that when Democrats passed the 1971 Voting Rights Act, giving the franchise to 18 year olds, is wasn't only conservative Republicans who objected and who agreed with right-wing Democratic cartoonist and Nixon ally Al Capp when he said "the opinions of eighteen-year-olds are valuable on things they know something about, such as puberty and hubcaps, but nothing else." In fact conservative Democrats and Blue Dog forerunners were as implacably opposed to expanding voting rights as were Republican conservatives. Perlstein:

The people most terrified of the eighteen-year-old vote were Old Politics Democrats afraid of New Politics primary challenges

This year Blue America has been supporting primaries to Blue Dogs in California (Jane Harman), Utah (Jim Matheson), Georgia (John Barrow), Oklahoma (Dan Boren) and Florida (in an open seat between a corrupt and reactionary Blue Dog, Lori Edwards, and a populist, reform-minded Democrat, Doug Tudor). Hoyer, significantly, as been extremely active in these races on behalf of the Blue Dogs, most often getting corrupt lobbyists and his corporate cronies to pour money into the campaigns on behalf of the Blue Dogs. We have three races to go and I hope on this 4th of July weekend you'll be inspired by the same progressive ethos that inspired patriots who rose up against the British conservatives in the 18th Century. It's a battle that never ends and as Bob Dylan reminded us:

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Enjoy the music and please, if you can, lend a hand to Regina Thomas, Jim Wilson and Doug Tudor, Democrats we can be proud of rather than Blue Dogs we have to be ashamed of. (If these three Democrats were voting Thursday night, instead of warmongers Barrow, Boren and Putnam, the Afghanistan War would have been defunded.)