{"id":2294,"date":"2010-10-04T10:49:22","date_gmt":"2010-10-04T10:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2294"},"modified":"2010-10-04T10:49:22","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T10:49:22","slug":"blue_dogs_who_became_lap_dogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2294","title":{"rendered":"Blue Dogs Who Became Lap Dogs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748703859204575526061943295810.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop\">Wall Street Journal<\/a>&nbsp;posted an article entitled, &#8220;The Lap Dog Coalition.&#8221;&nbsp; I checked it out just on the basis of the name!&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>The Wall Street Journal reports:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p><em>&#8220;In the House of Representatives, the 54 members of the Blue Dog Coalition are the self-described fiscal conservatives in the Democratic caucus. Unfortunately, the description doesn&#8217;t fit.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The Blue Dogs organized a coalition after the Republican takeover of the House in 1994.&nbsp; The labeled themselves conservative, but loyal, democrats.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The article reports:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><em>&#8220;In their first Congress, the Blue Dogs mostly lived up to the hype (albeit in an economically conservative environment). In 1995, the average Blue Dog&#8217;s score on the National Taxpayers Union&#8217;s congressional score card&#8211;which measures how well members vote on matters of taxes, spending and debt&#8211;was 52%, while the average Democratic score was 28%.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Unfortunately, after the Democrats took the House back in 2006, things changed.&nbsp; The article reports:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><em>&#8220;Blue Dogs&#8217; average NTU scores since then (2007), during Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s first three years as House speaker, were 10%, 15% and 18%&#8211;hardly distinguishable from the average Democratic scores of 6%, 11% and 8%.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In a sense, this is a tribute to Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s ability to hold together the Democrat vote.&nbsp; Had the Blue Dogs been willing to, they could have successfully opposed any spending and big government legislation put forth by the House of Representatives&#8211;they had the numbers.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This is a lesson to remember in November.&nbsp; Right now, at this point in American history, there is no such thing as a conservative Democrat.&nbsp; As soon as any Democrat elected to the House of Representatives votes for Nancy Pelosi for speaker, they are voting for more spending and bigger government.&nbsp; If you want to reverse the direction of Congress, your only option is to vote Republican in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Wall Street Journal&nbsp;posted an article entitled, &#8220;The Lap Dog Coalition.&#8221;&nbsp; I checked it out just on the basis of the name!&nbsp; The Wall Street Journal reports: &#8220;In the House of Representatives, the 54 members of the Blue Dog Coalition &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2294\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}