Are Obama And Hoyer After Pelosi?

Interesting. Jimmie at The Sundries Shack kicks it off - see his post. Pelosi wanted Murtha as a Number 2, not Hoyer. Now Hoyer, a Blue Dog, is pushing Pelosi into a fight she'll lose against the Senate.

The BD's still insist Obama is one of their own - I know, when haven't we heard that before? But it's true. And Obama is working primarily with the Blue Dogs to do an end run on the Liberal House with his fiscal responsibility summit. The up or down vote prevents Pelosi from meddling with any Bill.

The president met with 44 fiscally conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats this week and gave a nod to legislation that would set up commissions to deal with long-term deficit strains. The commissions would then present plans to Congress for an up-or-down vote.

Did Pelosi prove herself too liberal for someone who wants to be re-elected given the Stimulus Bill she put out? Obama perhaps feeling he had no choice? He wanted something done. But maybe he doesn't want it happening again? 

He knows how to play the game the Chicago way. Don't ever forget that. Or to see Jimmie's post.

Comments

[BlogDog]

How doe Blue Dog Dems get the label "fiscally conservative?" Did any of them vote against the porkulus bill? Not anti vote = not fiscally conservative in any real sense of the term.

[mark l.]

I thought the press was telling us that the gop was the party that was causing problems with their ideology.

Is Steny a member of the blue dogs?

[Kaitian]

"Is Steny a member of the blue dogs?"

That's correct, he's not a member. He's obviously looking to catapult himself to the top and that is with the help of the Blue Dog Coalition if his plans work.

[mark l.]

I got a sneaky feeling they are going to cut the military budget by about 1/3...

623 billion to 415 billion. The gop will hem and haw on the size of the cut, and they'll wind up with a 25% cut, which the press will applaud as a sign of barry's moderation. Without the bluedogs, the military cuts go nowhere.

The goal is probably to use the cut intially to make interest payments on our loan, and in theory provide a four year 'revenue' of 623 billion. Doubt it will help the 4-5 trillion in debt that obama runs up this year alone, but then, these cuts aren't so much fiscal acts as they are ideological ones.

[NukemHill]

11 of the blue dogs voted against the House bill during the first round. 8 the second. So yes, some of the blue dogs are fiscal conservatives. At least, more fiscally conservative than Olympia Snowe.

[gk1]

It's too bad the polarization of both the parties has left so little wiggle room to get anything remotely bi-partisan done. Reagan still had a nice chunk of democratic "boweevils" in the south to get around Tip O'Neal's obstinate majority. In Carter's day they had scoop jackson democrats to provide some counter weight to ted kennedy. Now the democrats have no one to guide them back to the center.

[Ken Hahn]

This has nothing to do with fiscal restraint and everything to do with power. Hoyer is as liberal as Pelosi but has better political instincts. The blue dogs are in districts where Pelosi is a bigger liability than Hoyer, simply because she's better known. Self preservation is the first law of politics and the only law observed in the Democratic Party. Obama will give Hoyer and the blue dogs a bit of pork and get rid of the Speaker, who costs Democrats votes almost everywhere in the country. Hoyer will get to pass out the biscuits and the blue dogs will again prove to be lapdogs. Hoyer is a machine politician like Obama and not an ideologue like Pelosi. He'll be content to be porkmeister. Obama gets his tame Congress and Steny gets his title.

Honest Democrat is a contradiction in terms.

[Franklin's Lcoke]

Without a balance on the Dems side they are going to keep pulling Left toward extreme Liberal policies. gk1 is right. The Dems need a guide to show them the center. It would counter Obama and Pelosi and settle alot of American's nerves about the direction of the country. Until then, the Dems are going to irritate the Right and unsettle the Center of the country with these scary Liberal policies that have never worked when they were tried.

http://franklinslocke.blogspot.com/

[Colin]

The Blue Dogs are all bark and no bite. How many of them voted against the stimulus package again? Some fiscal conservatives they are proving to be. It's a caucus that Arlen Specter would feel right at home in.

[amr]

Nukemhill said, "11 of the blue dogs voted against the House bill during the first round. 8 the second." The reports I saw said 7 not 8 the second time, but anyway I don't think Frank Kratovil (1st Dist MD-D), my Rep, is a blue dog. He voted for SCHIP and everything about him has him as a "Pelosi clone". Yea, he did vote against it the first time and called it wasteful spending, but his district is conservative; about even in registration. He barely won in the past election, is a freshman, so I imagine he was allowed to vote no the first time to give him some cover.

[J D Everyman]

Pelosi's revenge is not good public policy!

[Ed]

Pelosi is all about destroying the American economy in order to discredit capitalism as a viable economic system. Once capitalism is discredited she will usher in the era of American socialism.

People forget she is a red diaper baby who grew up among communists and socialists in northern california and who follows the ideology of the communist manifesto .

It started with the GOP self-destructing and continues with the election of Obama, funded by George Soros. The trillion dollar boondoggle called the stimulus bill will fund the next steps with cash for every left-wing interest group that helped out in the recent election; ACORN, UAW, the left-wing bloggers, NOW, Greenpeace etc, etc.

Obama knows who got him elected and it wasn't Steny Hoyer and the wishy-washy democrat centrists. He will toe Pelosi's line, dance to the loony left's tune and sign-off on their programs until they no longer need him. Its laughable to think Obama is "plotting" against her and the left-wingers. They will have Hoyer's head on a pike within six months.

[Mrtomm]

As a long time lurker on this blog I am constantly amazed at the idiocy dispayed regularly here