Taking a Bite Out of a Blue Dog Dem

Posted by Glenn Greenwald, Brave New Films at 9:21 AM on May 21, 2008.

A major new ad campaign aimed at freshman Democratic Rep. Chris Carney of Pennsylvania will begin this week. The campaign -- funded by donations from readers of several blogs -- will swamp Carney's Northeastern Pennsylvania district with a coordinated series of ads on television stations and top-rated radio programs, full-page ads in six out of seven of the largest newspapers in Carney's district, and strategically placed billboards on major roads. The impetus and rationale for the ad campaign was explained here.

The campaign arises out of the leading role Carney has been playing in pressuring the House to vest the President with vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and to bestow amnesty to telecoms which illegally allowed warrantless spying by the Bush administration on their own customers. Carney has received substantial campaign contributions from several of the telecoms which stand to benefit most from the amnesty he supports.

Carney is a so-called "Blue Dog" Democrat who continuously sides with the Bush administration and supports its most radical policies. In addition to his leading role in demanding warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, he has repeatedly voted against timetables to end the war in Iraq. He is a close associate of Douglas Feith, with whom he worked on pre-war "intelligence" at the Rumsfeld Pentagon, and Carney still claims that "there were links between Iraq and Al Qaeda." Unsurprisingly, then, Carney has spoken out against Congressional investigations into those responsible for pre-war intelligence "failures" (which would include himself and Feith), calling such investigations a "major distraction." Among his most enthusiastic supporters in 2006 was Richard Perle.

[...]

This campaign against Carney is intended to be but the first of its kind, a template, for conveying to Beltway Democrats that there will be a price to pay, real consequences, when they support the most radical, destructive and corrupt right-wing policies. There is widespread consensus that no matter what happens, House Democrats will substantially increase their margin this year. But if -- as appears to be the case -- a bulk of that increase comes from "Blue Dogs" like Carney, then it will make little difference. In fact, it might even be worse, since the effect of "Blue Dogs" is measured by far more than just the number of votes they cast. They essentially ensure that the Bush-following faction of the GOP maintains a working majority in Congress.

That is true particularly if there continues to be no incentive for Congressional Democrats to pay attention to their base and do anything other than support the right-wing agenda, because they perceive that they only pay a price when they oppose the Right. That is the incentive scheme that has to change.

Tagged as: blue dogs, chris carney