From Stuart Rothenburg in Roll Call:
On one level, it’s entirely reasonable for liberal Democrats to oppose the [tax cut extension] compromise. Those Democrats have different priorities and values than Republicans, and many of them represent very liberal constituents who also oppose the compromise.
Nobody — nobody — is saying that those House liberals should change their views. If they want to vote against the package that the president negotiated with Congressional Republicans, that’s their right.
But the outrage by House liberals, many of whom were responsible for the party’s legislative agenda and for Congress’ earlier inaction on the tax cuts, is more than a little hard to take.
Congressional Democrats had two years to address the Bush tax cuts. They certainly could have dealt with them one way or the other between late April 2009 and mid-January 2010, when the party had a 60-seat majority in the Senate and a huge majority in the House.
In September, the House ducked a vote on the tax cuts because plenty of Democrats wanted to avoid taking a stand before the elections, especially since they were wisely suspicious of what the Senate would, or would not, do.
Why should these Democrats show some legislative humility? Because the Democratic majority has been rejected by voters, and Democrats ought to behave that way.
All you needed to do to see the self-delusion was to watch Democrats appearing on TV over the weekend. On CNN, Reps. Jim McDermott (Wash.) and Elijah Cummings (Md.) sounded no different than they did before November. The same held for Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
For House Democrats to act as if nothing changed on Nov. 2 is nuts. Totally nuts.
Read the whole thing here. (Subscriber wall)
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