Thursday, April 26, 2007
Traitors to the Party
Math was never my highest skill, but fortunately there are calculators out there which are cheap. So I can divide 435, the number of members of the House of Representative, by two and declare, without fear of contradiction, that the bare minimum majority in the House is 218, which by coincidence, is just the number of votes with which the Surrender* bill passed in the House. Two of those voting 'yes' were Republicans: Walter Jones of the 3rd District in North Carolina and Wayne Gilchrest of the Ist District in Maryland (the eastern shore).
Likewise, there are only 49 Democrats in the Senate, with two independents who vote and caucus with them, socialist Bernie Sanders (NH) and Joe Lieberman (CN). That's a total of 51, but with Senator Johnson (D-ND) down with a stroke for the immediate future and Lieberman pledged to vote against the spending bill (with pork and withdrawal mandates), some Republicans had to cross the aisle to give it the bare minimum it passed by just a few hours ago. It took me a long time to find out who, but they are not surprises, Chuck Hagel, (NE) and Gordon Smith (OR).
Hagel, Smith, Jones and Gilchrest all should face strong challenges in the primaries in their next re-election tries, if any. You can't be this wrong on the single most important issue of our day and stay in our big tent.
*Iraq Spending Bill
Likewise, there are only 49 Democrats in the Senate, with two independents who vote and caucus with them, socialist Bernie Sanders (NH) and Joe Lieberman (CN). That's a total of 51, but with Senator Johnson (D-ND) down with a stroke for the immediate future and Lieberman pledged to vote against the spending bill (with pork and withdrawal mandates), some Republicans had to cross the aisle to give it the bare minimum it passed by just a few hours ago. It took me a long time to find out who, but they are not surprises, Chuck Hagel, (NE) and Gordon Smith (OR).
Hagel, Smith, Jones and Gilchrest all should face strong challenges in the primaries in their next re-election tries, if any. You can't be this wrong on the single most important issue of our day and stay in our big tent.
*Iraq Spending Bill
Labels: Iraq spending bill vote
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 4:48 PM 
