Dixiecrats Threaten Democratic Chance To Win Back The House In 2012

Even a casual reader of this blog should know that one of our favorite books of the last several years has been Nixonland by progressive historian Rick Perlstein. The Blue Dog caucus was formed until two decades after the Nixon tragedy played itself out on the national stage. But even back then the problem of right-wing Democrats polluting the brand of the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt was very much something that had to be contended with. Even after Nixon's successful "Southern Strategy" helped cleanse the Democratic Party of many overt racists and corporate shills-- like Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm, Rick Perry, and Richard Shelby, all of whom hopped the fence to join the GOP-- a conservative residue of southern Democrats has remained behind to continue distorting the Democratic Party's traditional family-oriented agenda. Today in the House that residue is known as the Blue Dog caucus and I was struck by Perlstein's description of what attracted Nixon to that type of Southern Democrat, former Texas Democratic Governor John Connally who he made Secretary of the Treasury in 1971 and who officially switched to the GOP two years later.

One of the things that delighted Nixon was that Connally had no fixed ideology. In fact, he boasted that he had no fixed convictions about anything: 'I can play it round or I can play it flat, just tell me how to play it' was one of his nostrums-- paraphrasing the apocryphal applicant for a job as a rural science teacher, asked about his convictions about the shape of the earth."

Connally, the consummate wheeler-dealer and suck up to plutocratic interests, had a long history of ethics violations and a career of skirting the law to enrich himself and his cronies. He eventually ran for the Republican presidential nomination (1980), sucked up more Big Business and lobbyist money than any other candidate but was beaten by the unstoppable Charlie Brown Ronald Reagan. Connally spent $11-- an unthinkably huge sum in those days-- and won exactly one delegate.

For Southern Democrats-- most recently Alabama reactionary Parker Griffith-- Blue Dogism, who once called themselves Boll Weevils, is a transitionary state between being a right-wing Democrat and a full-on Republican. Of the three founders of the caucus-- Texan Pete Geren and Louisianans Billy Tauzin and Jimmy Hayes-- Geren went to work for Bush as a turn-coat Democrat and Tauzin and Hayes switched parties outright.

Southern Blue Dogs generally do not pay DCCC dues and suck up the bulk of DCCC campaign contributions, while voting, when it comes to tough, contested issues, with the Republicans most of the time. Most of them-- Travis Childers (MS), Gene Tayor (MS), Lincoln Davis (TN), Marion Berry (AR), Bart Gordon (TN), Frank Kratovil (MD), Glenn Nye (VA), Charlie Melancon (LA), John Tanner (TN), Jim Marshall (GA), Allen Boyd (FL), and Bobby Bright (AL)-- retired or were defeated last November.

The only ones left are a motley and confused group who have voted overwhelmingly with Boehner. Below is a list of current Dixiecrats along with their latest ProgressivePunch scores:

John Barrow (GA- 26.19)
Sanford Bishop (GA- 50.0)
Dan Boren (OK- 14.29)
Ben Chandler (KY- 33.33)
Jim Cooper (TN- 50.0)
Henry Cuellar (TX- 26.19)
Mike McIntyre (NC- 32.50)
Mike Ross (AR- 19.05)
David Scott (GA- 50.0)
Heath Shuler (NC- 45.24)

35 Republicans have voted less frequently in lockstep with John Boehner than Dan Boren has. "No one really thinks of him as a Democrat," one high-ranking congressional staffer told me. "None of these Blue Dogs... the ones who Boehner can depend on day in and day out, is what you could really call a Democrat. It's all a silly, dysfunctional fiction that sacrifices party integrity for some kind of self destructive myth about a Big Tent that's just killing us. Steve Israel [conservative ex-Blue Dog who is now head of the DCCC] will only make it worse... We should be able to win back the House in 2012 just based on Republican overreach, but we won't. These guys didn't learn a thing last November."

Blue America, which helped retire the worst of the aisle crossers last year, Bobby Bright, hopes to find at least another couple to pick off in this cycle, hopefully in primaries. We are also working to make sure progressive challengers to Republicans don't get pushed out of their races by Israel and Shuler. If you would like to lend a hand, please do so at the BadDogs page.