In a few weeks, voters will go to the polls in a special election to fill the Congressional seat in Pennsylvania that was held for 36 years by the late Democratic Congressman John Murtha. He passed away on February 8th. He was an old-school, bring-home-the-bacon kind of pork barrel politician, and so as not to speak too ill of the dead, I’ll just leave it there.
Anyway, even though this seat has been held by a Democrat for decades, Republicans believe they have a pretty good chance of winning it. The Weekly Standard’s May 3rd edition had an article on the race, and I’d like to quote from it here:
Democratic politicians still win districts like Pennsylvania’s 12th by masquerading as members of the old party. They emphasize their commitment to fiscal discipline, support of gun rights, belief in low taxes, and opposition to abortion. Yet while they might run for Congress as the heirs of Harry Truman, they vote in Congress as the lieutenants of Nancy Pelosi. Time and again, Speaker Pelosi has managed to hold onto enough “conservative” Democrats on controversial votes like the stimulus bill, cap and trade, and health care.
If the Republican party is to retake the House of Representatives in November, it will have to expose these Democrats for what they are—Pelosi loyalists who say one thing on the campaign trail and then do another on Capitol Hill. The Republicans will have to rebrand the Democratic party on the local level, making voters see that it is no longer the party of Jackson, Roosevelt, or even Clinton—but of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. This job starts in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District in the May special election.”
Remind you of anyone? Me too. Sounds just like Steve Driehaus. He masquerades as someone who is committed to fiscal discipline, low taxes, and opposition to abortion. But he votes with Nancy Pelosi virtually every time. He’s a “Pelosi loyalist who says one thing on the campaign trail and then does another thing on Capitol Hill.” It’s important that voters understand the Democratic Party, as represented by Driehaus, is “no longer the party of Jackson, Roosevelt, or even Clinton – but of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid.”
In the 2008 election, there were several articles in the Cincinnati Enquirer that referred to Steve Driehaus as a “conservative.” After Driehaus’s record of voting with Nancy Pelosi 94% of the time, on everything from the so-called stimulus package, to the budget, to Cap and Trade, to health care, the Enquirer would risk being laughed out of journalism to again refer to Driehaus as a conservative, or even as a moderate. He’s clearly a liberal, or a progressive as liberal’s prefer to be called nowadays.
The Weekly Standard article closed with the following paragraph:
Driehaus’s days of talking like a conservative while voting like a liberal will be coming to an end this fall. It worked for awhile, but people are on to him now. They’re tired of the masquerade. They deserve the truth. They deserve to be represented by a person who will vote the same way in Washington, as they talk here at home. It’s time for a change.
Remember in November.