Moe Lane

Alternate title: Politically flabby Democrat (in comfortably Democratic seat) suddenly remembers that home state is losing a Congressional District; and that the redistricting process is fully in the hands of the other party*.

Which is probably too long a title, at that.  Anyway, Mikey Doyle is very, very sorry that the Tea Party thought that he was talking about them when he started spouting off about terrorists:

U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, said he wasn’t comparing Tea Party members with terrorists when he used the word during a closed-door caucus meeting Monday, but was expressing frustration at President Obama’s negotiating tactics, which he said gave in too quickly to GOP demands in the debt ceiling debate.

“Had I simply said hostage-taker, there wouldn’t be this reaction. I certainly wasn’t out to defame anybody,” said Doyle, who couldn’t recall the exact statement he made. (more…)

I cannot conclude but otherwise.

• Democrats in Congress refused to pass a budget this year.  Paul Ryan thinks that they’re doing this in order to justify passing a VAT: I think that they’re d0ing this because they don’t want to explain why they spend worse than drunken sailors*; these two opinions are not incompatible with each other.
• The White House plans to wait on trying to pass a cap-and-trade bill until after the elections, but before the 112th Congress takes office.  This is incompatible with the Democrats’ breezy assurances that they’re going to do well in November; and I agree with Jim Geraghty that Republican nominees need to get Democratic incumbents on the record as to how they feel about this policy.
• Immigration reform?  What’s that?  Aside from the White House signing off on telling Ecuador about upcoming litigation before it bothers to tell American citizens, of course.
• Congressional Democrats do not want to repeat the debacle of the health care summit - and, yes, it was a debacle for Congressional Democrats; they were expecting to be able to run on passing Obamacare, and now they’re hoping that it doesn’t hurt them too badly – on any of these subjects.

(more…)

[UPDATE] Welcome, Michelle Malkin readers.

Tim Bishop (D, NY-01) is having something called a “health care reform rally” on Thursday, at (of all things) SEIU’s Hicksville NY offices (1199 Duffy Ave, starts at 1 PM). This is otherwise known as “over twenty miles outside the borders of NY-01.” Bishop is of course one of the first Democrats holding down a Red district (NY-01 is a R+0) to discover that his constituents are paying attention to his votes: he rather famously canceled his future in-district meetings. Presumably he assumes that his constituents won’t drive twenty miles to complain.

Meanwhile, Leonard Boswell (D, IA-03) has at least decided to stay in-district for his “health care listening post” – barely.  Although his district includes Des Moines, Boswell has instead decided to travel 80 miles east this week to the Sigourney Public Library (Thursday, 2 PM).  He won’t be actually having any meetings on the subject in the Des Moine area (where the vast majority of his constituents live) for another two weeks.  Still, at least he’s having them; apparently being D+1 can make the difference between in and out of district.

Neither one of these two Congressmen are freshmen, and neither were considered to be hardline liberals before this Congress.  And both of them are clearly not interested in facing their constituents just quite yet.  Very interesting, that.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

It’s dead during the term of this administration, and never mind what TPMDC thinks. I’d give credit for the Obama administration for at least not duplicating the public relations fiasco that the Clinton administration got itself into sixteen years ago, but do we really want to reward a lack of intestinal fortitude?

Frank: Democrats Punting on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Until 2010

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Thursday that Democratic leaders won’t push to repeal the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy governing gay service in the military until 2010.

“I believe we should and will do ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ next year,” said Frank, a co-chairman of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Equality Caucus. “We haven’t done the preliminary work, the preparatory work. It would be a mistake to bring it up without a lot of lobbying and a lot of conversation.”

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