If we didn’t already know it we know it now. Each major party is going to use the House vote from last week attaching ridiculous conditions on the military supplemental funding bill and plenty of pork to get the extra votes needed such as help for spinach growers, peanut storage help, dairy help etc. to the bill that was supposed to be about funding the troops.

The leadership chose not to use a plain up or down vote on whether or not to stop funding of the troops, but added so many restrictions to the bill it would do the same thing while sweetening the pot a bit for the Congressmen and women across the board who were having difficulty voting for the bill.

Let’s remember that bill passed by the barest majority of 118 which is exactly one more vote than half of the House. Two Republicans put it over the top.

Campaign staffers from both parties are using the vote on Democrats’ troop withdrawal plan to target vulnerable members of Congress in the 2008 races.

Within hours of the House’s 218-212 vote Friday, Republicans sent 50 campaign missives saying Democrats were “waving a white flag of surrender” by approving a war-funding bill that set a timetable for pulling troops from Iraq.

“It’s not a vote that’s going to be forgotten any time soon,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

Democrats plan to portray votes against the bill as rubber stamps for an unpopular president when they campaign against the Republicans who opposed it.

“We had two choices: more troops, more money, more time, more of the same, no strings attached,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the Democratic Caucus chairman. “That is what the president has had for four years, and he has asked for another year of exactly the same thing.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said a vote against the bill equated to renewing President Bush’s “blank check for an open-ended commitment to a war without end.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) echoed this theme, saying Democrats were bringing accountability and oversight “for the first time in six years.”

The NRCC’s campaign message hitting 50 members, mostly freshmen, said approval of the measure was akin to setting “a date certain for retreat and defeat in Iraq” and embracing a plan “to cut off funding for our troops.”

Many of the freshman congressmen and women who voted for this bill campaigned in conservative districts as conservatives. Let’s see how that goes over at home and if the voters remember it when the next election rolls around.

Source.

Here’s a list of the freshmen congressmen who voted for this bill, after many of them campaigned as conservatives in conservative districts:

AZ-5: Harry Mitchell
AZ-8: Gabrielle Giffords
CA-11: Jerry McNerney
CO-7: Ed Perlmutter
CT-2: Joe Courtney
CT-5: Christopher Murphy
FL-16: Tim Mahoney
FL-22: Ron Klein
IA-1: Bruce Braley
IN-2: Joe Donnelly
IN-8: Brad Ellsworth
IN-9: Baron Hill
KS-2: Nancy Boyda
KY-3: John Yarmuth
MN-1: Timothy Walz
NC-11: Heath Shuler
NH-1: Carol Shea-Porter
NH-2: Paul Hodes
NY-19: John Hall
NY-20: Kirsten Gillibrand
NY-24: Michael Arcuri
OH-18: Zachary Space
PA-4: Jason Atmire
PA-7: Joe Sestak
PA-8: Patrick Murphy
PA-10: Christopher Carney
TX-22: Nick Lampson
WI-8: Steve Kagen

Written by ~J~

2 Responses to “Dueling Campaign Messages (What’s New?)”

1. DJ Drummond says:

   March 26, 2007 at 2:51 pm

   In his ‘defense’, Nick Lampson never pretended to be a conservative. He lied about being competent and caring about his constituents, but he never claimed to be unbiased or open-minded.
2. naremannn says:

   May 10, 2007 at 5:25 am

   we no need an education