These Blue Dogs Won't Hunt

...Ken Spain, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, cruelly alluded to Shuler’s less than stellar career with the Washington Redskins, predicting that “flip-flopping on something as simple as keeping taxpayer dollars out of the pockets of Washington lobbyists” portends a stay in D.C...

...Resolutions mourning the death of Gerald Ford, observing the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., and celebrating Boise State’s victory in the Fiesta Bowl (although you’d think the Oklahoma delegation might have opposed that one) have all passed unanimously this year, to cite just a few examples...

...Patrick McHenry offered an identical amendment on the House floor, saying, “If the Democrat majority was truly elected and is committed to severing the link between legislation and lobbyists, they will vote for this motion...

...In the place of a secret ballot, union organizers would have the option of asking for a publicly posted card that would show anyone interested who was in favor of unionizing, and who was still holding out...

...The question,” says Spain, “is whether these ‘conservative’ Democrats will have the sense to do an about-face and start casting votes that reflect the needs of their districts, not the demands of Nancy Pelosi...

...Tying freshmen to their leaders is nothing new...

...That was then...

...That, and whether their Republican opponents can make the charge stick...

...The fact that organized labor wields so much influence within the Democratic Congress that even vulnerable freshmen like [Kansas’s Nancy] Boyda and Shuler and [Florida’s Tim] Mahoney had to support it ought to be worrisome for someone looking for a probusiness Congress...

...Since he joined the House, Shuler’s votes have become indistinguishable from his liberal colleagues...

...The majority of votes on the floor of the House are procedural or meaningless...

...Harris believes “the whole thing was a huge political overreach by Pelosi...

...Republicans have already started to portray their opponents as having reversed that set of priorities...

...The GOP is portraying Shuler and other potentially vulnerable freshmen as toeing the line for leadership in committee, but voting differently when it becomes politically expedient to do so...

...Interest groups are already turning up the heat—in the wake of the card-check vote, the CDW ran radio ads in Shuler’s, Boyda’s, and Mahoney’s districts condemning the bill...

...There’s a real sense that corporate profits are up, worker productivity is up, yet worker rights are stagnant...

...We cannot leave a political vacuum in Iraq and threaten to further destabilize the entire region,” he wrote...

...It’s telling that they would make a 180-degree turn on the national stage, when some of their constituents might be watching on C-SPAN,” said Aaron Latham, McHenry’s press secretary...

...He also said that, though there is obviously pressure coming from the whip operation to toe the line, “It’s always been made clear to me by leadership that you vote your conscience, your constituents, and then your caucus, in that order...

...Shuler, along with every other Democratic member of the resources committee, then reversed course and voted on the record to ban publicly funded lobbyists...

...Sonny Bunch is assistant editor at The Weekly STAndArd...

...He cosponsored the recent “card-check” legislation backed by big labor and Nancy Pelosi’s most senior adviser, a liberal bull from California by the name of George Miller...

...He voted to oppose the president’s plan to surge troops into Baghdad and for the supplemental setting benchmarks for the Iraqi government and a timetable for withdrawal...

...BY SONNY BUNCH Running for Congress last fall in North Carolina, Heath Shuler staked out ground as a conservative Democrat...

...One Republican operative told me the “card check” vote “is going to cause some problems for these new Democrats...

...Of course, some of this is to be expected...

...The day after defeating a scandal-dogged Taylor by 8 points in a district George W. Bush had carried by 14, Shuler feigned uncertainty as to whether he would support Pelosi’s candidacy for speaker...

...It seems that they’ve already decided that they want to vote with their leadership, at least early on...

...More important, neither bill was in any danger of being defeated...

...as brief as the time he spent here as a professional quarterback...

...Shuler’s record is hardly unique— three quarters of the newly elected House Democrats hail from districts previously held by Republicans...

...For their part, the new Democrats do not seem overly concerned...

...Consider one odd sequence during the first week of March...

...Pelosi and Hoyer can’t get too worked up about these betrayals: Shuler and Ellsworth campaigned as pro-lifers in districts strongly opposed to embryonic stem cell research, while Lampson holds the Texas seat once occupied by Tom DeLay...

...In a district held comfortably by Republican Charles Taylor since 1990, the former all-American quarterback distanced himself from Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi...

...Unity held on even the important and potentially divisive topics, however—in Pelosi’s much-vaunted “first 100 hours,” the only substantial defections by novices were those of Shuler, Brad Ellsworth, Charlie Wilson, and Joe Donnelly, who voted against their leadership with regard to expanding stem cell research, and Nick Lampson’s objection to the Ending Subsidies for Big Oil Act of 2007...

...Despite the fact that George W. Bush carried his Minnesota district by 4 points in 2004, he is convinced he has made the right votes thus far, from the anti-surge measure to the pro-union legislation...

...On a party line vote at the behest of leadership, the Democrats on the committee (including Shuler) voted it down...

...While Nancy Pelosi remains a more popular figure nationally than Gingrich was at the time, GOP partisans feel she can still be used as a dead weight to drag down congressional Democrats in more conservative parts of the country...

...According to an analysis in the Washington Post’s Capitol Briefing blog, through the first seven weeks of the 110th Congress, the 42 new members “have voted in near lockstep with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats...

...He was one of the few insurgent Democrats who didn’t believe in the immediate withdrawal from Iraq urged by John Murtha, and one of only two to use the word “win” on his campaign website with regard to Iraq...

...This has not been the only vote to inspire confidence in House Republicans hoping to take back the chamber in 2008...

...In this way, they can be marked as either beholden to their leftwing leadership, or unprincipled on important issues, a lose-lose proposition politically...

...Shuler ran as a pro-life, pro-gun moderate...

...He portrayed himself as a pro-business moderate, and, after arriving on Capitol Hill, joined the Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of fiscally conservative Democrats...

...Todd Harris, the head of communications and media for the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW), denounced the legislation as a “bill to rob workers of the right to a federally supervised private election when deciding whether to join a union...

...Only 14 of the 42 had cast even one roll call vote deviating from the party line...

...Out of almost 4,000 total votes cast by the new members, a mere 20 were cast against positions advocated by Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and the rest of the Democratic caucus’ leadership...

...We must win this war...

...Republicans in the Natural Resources Committee attempted to attach an amendment prohibiting the funneling of federal funds into the hands of lobbyists to a bill aimed at “preserving sites of significant American heritage...

...I want to see which other member decides to run against Pelosi,” Shuler said, knowing full well she was the only legitimate candidate in the Democratic caucus...

...He also voted for the Pelosi-backed plan to dismantle the president’s prescription drug benefit for Medicare, a benefit that has dramatically increased the number of seniors covered and enjoys an approval rating hovering around 80 percent...

...Later that very same day, Republican Rep...

...As a small business owner I have a deep appreciation for the issues facing these companies,” Shuler said, promising to “work closely with small business owners to ensure the tools and resources they need to compete, expand, and create jobs are available...

...Tim Walz is one of the freshmen who rode the Democratic wave to victory...

...In 1995, Roll Call reported on a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee study trumpeting the news that “the 73 freshman Republicans in the House voted with the GOP leadership almost 97 percent of the time during the first 100 days” of the session, adding that “the DCCC has already briefly aired ads in two districts ‘morphing’ the Republican occupant of the seat into [Newt] Gingrich and has invoked the Speaker’s name repeatedly in direct mail solicitations...

...I]t is gut check time for them...

...That has not stopped them from joining their leadership in supporting the more liberal aspects of the Democratic agenda...

...It is definitely pro-worker,” he said in regard to card-check...

...Democratic higherups made sure to stamp out dissent on the union-backed “card check” measure...

...There’s a real sense in this country that all trade laws were done to be anti-labor...

...And Shuler left small businesses out to dry when he supported an increase in the minimum wage without demanding an offsetting tax reduction...