29 House Dems Join The GOP To Push The Keystone XL Pipeline Boondoggle-- What Is The Punishment?

Last week DCCC Chair and Steve Israel puppet Ben Ray Luján appointed Illinois Blue Dog Cheri Bustos DCCC vice-chair for recruitment. Wednesday she voted, once again, to force President Obama to start building the Keystone XL Pipeline on Republican terms, terms that are extremely disadvantageous to Americans. And Bustos, the Illinois Democrat who votes most frequently against progressive proposals and with the GOP, is trying to the Democratic Party Senate nomination for the seat Mark Kirk currently holds-- something that would virtually guarantee Kirk a second term.

In all, 29 Democrats-- primarily from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- crossed the aisle on the final Keystone approval, a bill President Obama will veto. Right now there aren't enough Democratic votes to override that veto. But it will be interesting to see if Bustos is one of the ones who takes that path. These are the 29:

• Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE)
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
• Robert Brady (PA)
• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)
• Jim Clyburn (SC)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Mike Doyle (PA)
• Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL)
• Al Green (TX)
• Gene Green (TX)
• Rubén Hinojosa (TX)
• Sheila Jackson Lee (TX)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Dave Loebsack (IA)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Rick Nolan (MN)
• Donald Norcross (NJ)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Cedric Richmond (New Dem-LA)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Albio Sires (NJ)
• Marc Veasey (TX)
• Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)
• Tim Walz (MN)

Many of them have taken extremely large sums of money from the Oil Industry. And several others are counting on Big Oil and related business interests to help them move up politically. Aside from Bustos' Senate ambitions, lifelong Republican spoiled brat turned New Dem Patrick Murphy has told intimates that if Marco Rubio decides to run for president and not for the Senate, he will run for the Florida Senate seat. Another Florida reactionary, freshman Blue Dog Gwen Graham, is also coveting that Senate seat. And Big Business interests, which are not fans of Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown, are talking up right-wing business shill Kurt Schrader as an eventual replacement for scandal-plagued Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber.

Should the Democratic Party be promoting and rewarding the worst members among themselves? That's exactly why it's so important that instinctual reactionaries like Steny Hoyer, Steve Israel, and Joe Crowley be stopped from consolidating power inside the party and be in positions where they can replicate their own toxic anti-working families ideology.

Not unrelated is the way resources have been allocated by the DCCC for incumbents in tight reelection bids. Yesterday, we found out that Republican Johnny Tacherra is back for a third try against Blue Dog Jim Costa. In November, Costa won-- barely-- in the recount, 46,277 (50.7%) to 44,943 (49.3%), an extremely low turnout in a pretty blue district (D+7) where Obama beat McCain 58-40% and beat Romney 59-39%. The district is nearly 60% Hispanic. Many traditional Democratic voters didn't bother turning out for Jim Costa, who spent $1,116,677 to Tacherra's $342,204. This time Costa, who just voted with the Republicans for Keystone and has the worst ProgressivePunch lifetime crucial vote score of any California Democrat (43.73), is expecting at least $2 million from the DCCC. Bad voting records seem, if anything, to encourage the DCCC to spend even more on bad candidates like Costa.