And while you're over at Washington Monthly, take a look at their new story on the unappreciated success Dems have had over the last year as the party in opposition. I've long thought the picture painted by many activists is far too bleak, and Amy Sullivan does a great job providing details to back me up. Here's my favorite part of the feature:
| One clear indication that things had changed came in the fall of 2005 when Republicans went after Jack Murtha. Two years earlier, Democrats had stood silently by while the GOP viciously attacked Daschle, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But when newly-elected Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) called Murtha a coward during a House budget debate, Democrats shouted her down and booed. Schmidt was forced to return and ask her remarks be stricken from the record, the parliamentary equivalent of eating her words. Later in the debate, when Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) taunted conservative Democrats as “lapdogs,” Democratic Rep. Marion Berry (D-Ark.) shot back, calling him a “Howdy-Doody looking nimrod.” As the House chair tried to gavel down the fracas that followed, shouting, “The House is out of order,” California Democrat Rep. George Miller could be heard yelling back, “You're out of order!”
Perhaps figuring they have little left to lose, Democrats have begun turning up the heat in countless small ways. When in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bush quietly suspended the Davis-Bacon Act in order to allow federal contractors to avoid paying the prevailing wage to workers involved in clean-up efforts, Miller led Democrats in handing the president a rare defeat. Appalled that “the President has exploited a national tragedy to cut workers' wages,” Miller unearthed a little-used provision of a 1976 law that allows Congress to countermand the president's authority to suspend laws after a national emergency. While it is usually nearly impossible for Democrats to get bills through the all-powerful House Rules Committee, Miller's maneuver would have bypassed that step and guaranteed an automatic vote by the full House. Bush, faced with a vote he was sure to lose, reversed his earlier action and reinstated Davis-Bacon. Democrats aren't shying away from quixotic fights, either. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) introduces an amendment to rename the FY2006 budget bill the “Moral Disaster of Monumental Proportion” Act. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) continues his one-man oversight operation, exposing the ineffectiveness of federally-funded abstinence-only programs, investigating taxpayer-funded propaganda, and detailing the failure of Iraq reconstruction efforts. A new 527 organization called the Senate Majority Project, started by former Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan, gets under the skin of several GOP senators in its first week of existence by publicly questioning their ethics (Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) took to the Senate floor to defend himself against the group). |
As a former DC native, I love that Arkansas has a rep named Marion Berry. And calling another pol a "Howdy-Doody looking nimrod" is something the original Barry might have done.
Anyway, the piece is a fairly short read, but it is well worth the effort. Its time to drop the "Dems are lame" narrative and replace it with something that actually reflects today's reality.
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