Blog

Last Monday, Mark Udall promised he would vote against adjournment to force Congress to deal with gas prices and the energy issue. The thing is, he didn’t. He missed the vote and got totally slammed by his opponent Bob Schaffer. From the Denver Post:

"While Coloradans are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, I guess it wasn’t important enough for (Udall) to show up for work this week," said Dick Wadhams, the campaign manager for Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer. "He made a commitment Monday, he didn’t even show up for work Tuesday and then he missed the vote today."

The Democrats won that vote 213-212. If Udall had been there, it would have been 213-213 and failed, because a tie-vote loses in the House.

In other words, Mark Udall broke his word. When it came down to him versus Nancy Pelosi’s leadership, he chose Nancy. Now Udall, will tell you he didn’t break his word. Read on to see the machinations that he and Steny Hoyer went through to give Udall cover.

<!–break–>

So what happens? Steny Hoyer comes to the rescue to give Udall cover. He gets another roll call vote. Go check out the Congressional Record:

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 398, 110th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to adjourn. The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.

In other words, on a voice vote, the adjournment motion passed. But there was a recorded vote. I did a partial survey of the 110th Congress, and this was on the only time that there was a recorded vote on both the adjournment resolution and motion.

And you might think that the vote was called by the Republicans. After all, they wanted to stay. Right? Nope:

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Steny did it. (note that the Majority gets right of recognition in this situation and, furthermore,  the person in the Chair is a Democrat) To provide CYA to his member who broke his word and didn’t show up to work.

Mark Udall only seems to keep his promise when it doesn’t matter. And where was he really when the vote was happening?

There has been plenty of attention given to the House Republicans storming the floor and protesting the refusal of House Democrats to vote on legislation increasing the domestic supply of oil.

Aside from the great theatrics of it, something struck me: for the first time, I really saw John Boehner as a solid minority leader, not just of the House Republicans, but of the GOP overall.

Now, Boehner and the House Republicans had done a great job wrapping Nancy Pelosi around an axle with motions to recommit and other parliamentary maneuvers. Similarly Mitch McConnell schools Harry Reid day in and day out on parliamentary procedure, although it is probably a lot easier to be Senate Minority Leader than Majority Leader. But I don’t think that I had ever really seen him clearly define both the Republicans and the Democrats on an issue with anything like the clarity or flair that we saw on Friday.

I have heard a lot of chatter about the leadership races after the elections, especially if John McCain were to lose. Who would be the symbol or the leader of the GOP?

After Friday, and continuing this week, one could actually imagine John Boehner in that role.

Hopefully John McCain will beat Barack Obama — and you all need to work to make sure that happens –, and it won’t come to that. But if he doesn’t, I feel a lot better about our leadership than I had before.

Point of personal privilege.

Ben Smith wrote about John McCain and the alleged need for him to look like he is technologically more sophisticated. When Ben called me, I told him that I thought it was a cheap attack against McCain. Jon Henke noted that  "Howard Dean ‘was a self-described ‘technophobe’".

Ben seems to suggest that I think that McCain should wear a stupid-looking high-tech earpiece. I don’t. That was Ben’s suggestion. I told him that I thought it was a bad idea, but I joked that an older-tech earpiece might be reminiscent of a fighter-pilot’s head-gear. That is clearly not how he represented me.

I was not misquoted — I was not quoted at all –, but my opinion was wildly misrepresented.

“Dollar bill” line about race, while Brittany ad not

Rasmussen actually asked people:

As for Obama’s comment, 53% of white voters saw it as racist, as
did 44% of African-Americans and 61% of all other voters.

So who was racist?

Unaffiliated voters, by a five-to-one margin, said the McCain ad
was not racist. By a much narrower 50% to 38% margin, unaffiliateds
viewed Obama’s comment as racist.

Perhaps the press and the lunatic lefty bloggers will stop now.
They are knifing their own candidate by screaming about this.