Following up on the failure of the Republican "leadership" to successfully pass a farm bill, some are expressing anger at the 24 Democratic House members who supported the bill despite the draconian cuts to food stamps included. But I have to disagree with them on this.
Because the Republican leadership can't count votes and their party has no discipline, every Democrat with a significant rural constituency that would be helped by the farm aspects of this bill had a free shot to vote FOR this bill, without it actually moving the bill forward in the legislative process or substantively affecting nutrition programs.
This is a win-win. Every one of these members (including Senator-to-be Bruce Braley from Iowa) can tell their constituents that they put the needs of their districts ahead of party labels. Better still, rural voters are predominantly Republican-leaning, who will be faced with the fact that the leaders of their party failed to deliver, while their Democratic member stuck with them.
The politics of this in the House for Democrats is beautiful. The nutrition title is the only thing most democrats (who tend to represent more urban districts with little agriculture) care about. The Senate tends to be more farmer-oriented because a strong majority of the Senate on both sides of the aisle have strong farming lobbies and constituencies in their states. In 2008, the Senate bill had lower nutrition numbers than the House, and over the course of the conference, the bill got stronger on nutrition to get support from urban House members.
Boehner, Canter and the rest of the Republican "leadership" can't lead their way out of a brown paper bag. Maybe they go back and try to make changes that will appeal to all the republican members they lost -- but that just diverges more and more from the bipartisan Senate bill, and in the end there are probably enough Republicans who won't support a farm bill no matter how draconian it is for the poor. Or maybe they go back and move the bill toward the Democrats on nutrition -- but that enrages their tea party constituency and loses them a lot of Republican votes. In fact, I have my doubts that the House Democrats (other than those with a significant rural constituency) could now be persuaded to vote for ANY farm bill without returning to the traditional house role of being the branch that is stronger on nutrition programs.
Look -- I totally agree on the merits of nutrition funding in the bill. But a vote for this by these 24 Democrats is a vote that helps 23 of those Democrats to hold their seats in some purple districts, and one to win election to the Senate from a heavily ag-dependent state without cutting a dime from SNAP. Don't mistake these democrats for opponents of nutrition funding.
Right now the Republican congressional campaigns and these members' prospective opponents in 2014 are cursing Boehner and Cantor for providing these good Democrats political cover in 2014 with nothing to show for it. This is what winning looks like.
