Dan Boren-- Leading Democrats Astray For Boehner

Last year Alabama Blue Dog Bobby Bright had the worst voting record of any Democrat in the House-- voting far more frequently with the GOP than with the Democrats on issues with partisan divisions. Blue America reminded his Democratic constituents of some of his votes against their interests and his margin in the blue areas of his district fell down and he was defeated. His replacement as the worst Democrat in the House is someone never far from that appellation anyway, Oklahoma corporate whore, Dan Boren.

According to ProgressivePunch's algorithm, Boren was worse than just the worst Democrat. His abysmal 15.87 score-- meaning he's voted with the GOP over 84% of the time-- is worse than two dozen Republicans! Boehner and Cantor have been able to count on Boren for nearly every important vote in the House. He's more reliable for them than extremist teabaggers Tom McClintock (R-CA) and Justin Amash (R-MI) and worse than rubber stamp corporate shills like Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), John Campbell (R-CA), Tom Petri (R-WI), Connie Mack (R-FL) and Steven LaTourette (R-OH). He has the exact same voting score as Dean Heller (R-NV), the newly appointed Republican Senator from Nevada. That's how much the GOP approves of Boren's voting score!

And, of course, he goes beyond just the voting when it comes to showing fealty to all the extremist positions embraced by the GOP. He's far to the right-- across the board-- of any other Blue Dog. In fact Boren, a poster boy for the NRA wrote one of the worst of the gun-loon bills of the year. Is was so extreme that there were even a couple of Republicans who couldn't vote for it!

Boren's amendment passed the House 277-149, with the support of a disgraceful 41 Democrats, mostly Blue Dogs but also some cowardly types from "gun states." Boren's bill-- which was eventually killed in behind the scenes congressional negotiations (a clue that even the GOP leadership though Boren's extremist was too dangerous and deranged-- had nothing to due with "gun states" though. His intention was to prevent the ATF from regulating the deadly, if not catastrophic, firearm sales along the Mexico border. Specifically, what Boren was proposing was to stop ATF from tracking bulk sales of assault weapons headed to Mexico.

But sometime before the final deal was announced on Friday night, lawmakers stripped the rider from the bill. The move came after concerned lawmakers and even Mexico's Ambassador to the United States lobbied congressional leadership and the White House to strip the language from the bill.

"ATF is already chronically underfunded and has been without a confirmed director since 2006 as a result of inaction by past sessions of Congress," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a co-chair of the coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said in a statement. "We welcome this sign that leaders in Washington may be ready to step up and help law enforcement save lives."

Instead of railing against the regular cast of characters who can always be counted on to support these kinds of lunatic pieces of legislation-- and did-- like slimy Blue Dogs John Barrow (GA), Heath Shuler (NC), Mike Ross (AR), Jim Cooper (TN), Mike McIntyre (NC), Joe Donnelly (IN) and Jim Matheson (UT), let's look at some House Democrats being pushed forward towards higher office who also joined Boren in his efforts-- Shelley Berkley, the Democratic nominee for the Nevada Senate seat and Martin Heinrich, the favorite to get the Democratic nomination for the open Senate seat in New Mexico. When the DSCC approaches you for support for these two, be sure you understand what you're voting for-- not just people willing to stand up for Second Amendment gun ownership rights-- important to their constituents-- but people without the moral backbone to oppose the bloody drug war along the Mexican border. or do you think voters in New Mexico and Nevada would be outraged if Mexican drug lords couldn't be arsenals of assault weapons here?