Yesterday, the House passed a bill to <strike>gut</strike> "reform" the Endangered Species Act, sponsored by none other than Richard "I've Got A National Park to Sell Ya" Pombo. While the bill, HR 3824, still has to pass in the Senate, an uphill battle, its passage in the House was not along pure party lines. The Republicans, perhaps emboldened by the losening of the The Hammer's grip, saw the defection of most Northeastern Republicans, including Shays (CT), Johnson (CT), Simmons (CT), Bass (NH), Bradley (NH), and Wheldon (PA) and vote to save their own skins on an issue which could easily come back to haunt them in their Blue, or better, Green, states. The Dems, however, saw 36 members abandon the one of the principal planks of the Party, environmental protection, to vote to screw that old straw man, er, bird, the Spotted Owl.
(more below the jump)
With all the discussion in the Lefty Blogosphere these days on Democrats and the Big Tent, I was curious as to how big that tent needs to be to include all Democrats, particularly ones who regularly vote with Republicans on such important issues as the ESA. So below are the Dems voting "aye", along with their latest rating from the League of Conservation Voters. As an added control, I looked at the NARAL rating of these Representatives as well, and those with an asterisk scored below 35%.
Abercrombie (HI) 81
Baca (CA) 61
Barrow (GA) n/a
Berry (AR) 42 *
Bishop (GA) 35 *
Boren (OK) n/a (54% OK Sierra Club)
Boyd (FL) 55
Cardoza (CA) 68 *
Costa (CA) 38
Costello (IL) 68 *
Cramer (AL) 35 *
Cuellar (TX) n/a (0 local Sierra Club)
Davis (AL) 61
Davis (TN) 58 *
Edwards (TX) 35
Ford (TN) 90
Herseth (SD) 56
Hinojosa (TX) 68
Holden (PA) 71 *
Marshall (GA) 58 *
Matheson (UT) 58 *
McIntyre (NC) 68 *
Melancon (LA) n/a
Mollohan (WV) 42 *
Murtha (PA) 55 *
Ortiz (TX) 42 *
Peterson (MN) 19 *
Pomeroy (ND)
Ross (AR) 42 *
Salazar (CO) n/a
Scott (GA) 55 *
Skelton (MO) 61 *
Tanner (TN) 48 *
Taylor (MS) 52 *
Thompson (MS) 74
Wynn (MD) 87
While it's obvious a rogue vote for some of the above (Ford, Wynn, Abercrombie), most ESA-bashers have mediocre, at best, environmental records. But even worse, many of them have outright lousy records on most of the planks which purportedly hold up the Democratic Party.
Let's take Representative Peterson, for example. Not only does he have a rating of 19% from the League of Conservation Voters, he received a 0% rating from NARAL, 29% from US PIRG, 0% from the Human Rights Campaign and 30% from the ACLU. But there are groups which actually think he isn't doing such a bad job, including National Rght to Life (100%), the Eagle Forum (73%), Concerned Women of America (86%), the John Birch Society (70%) and the Family Research Council (75%).
Taylor of Mississippi is just as bad. In fact, the National Journal surmised that only 24% of House members voted less liberally than he did on social issues. That's from both parties, including the darlings of the American Taliban.
Now, some might argue that we're lucky to even have Democrats elected from many of these districts, particularly in the South, and while they may be wingers, they're OUR wingers. That they may vote to make women incubators, gays second-class citizens and condors extinct, but they won't vote for Tom Delay as Majority Leader, and, somehow, that's a win.
Even without those lost DINO votes, Tom Delay is finding his job very much on the endangered list. So just how is keeping them in our big tent a win?