Two More Slimy Self-Serving Conservatives Headed From Congress To K Street

Earlier in the week many of his were chuckling in resignation when it was announced that Indiana corporate shill and reflexive reactionary Evan Bayh-- also well as paid Fox contributor-- is going to work for a long-time fascist organization as a lobbyist.

Not long after announcing his plans to retire in 2010, then-Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) offered this bit of commentary on why he'd opted to leave Congress after two terms in office: "I want to be engaged in an honorable line of work." It was taken as a biting critique of the increasingly polarized and dysfunctional Senate, and a hint that Bayh's post-Senate plans might include a quiet career in academia, away from politics.

Now Bayh is eating his words. As iWatch News' Peter Stone reports, Bayh has signed on with one of the most corporate-friendly, anti-environment shops in all of Washington, DC: the US Chamber of Commerce. According to an internal memo penned by Chamber president Tom Donohue, Bayh, along with former Bush White House chief of staff Andy Card, are now part of the Chamber's anti-regulation messaging team, doing "speeches, events, and media appearances at local venues."

The Chamber's hiring of Bayh, a big name in Washington circles, will only help its efforts to delay or kill new regulatory legislation in Congress. Indeed, Donohue's memo touts how the Chamber has filed legal briefs to challenge the validity of President Obama's health care reform bill; successfully delayed a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule on giving shareholders a say on corporate directors; unveiled plans to undermine the clout of the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and delayed a rule forcing companies to disclose when they use conflict minerals from the Congo in their products. Bayh and Card, the memo says, will help the Chamber push this pro-corporate agenda in Washington and beyond.

But just as we were hoping Bayh's revolving door would hit him in the butt on the way out, news broke that an even worse example of a right-wing Democrat would soon be scurrying from Capitol Hill to K Street. This year-- as almost every year-- spoiled child of privilege and scummy dishonorable Blue Dog Dan Boren was the Democrat who voted most frequently with the Republicans on key substantive issues before the House. His ProgressivePunch Crucial Votes score for the current session is a dismal 17.43, not just the worst for any Democrat, but worse than 16 Republicans. Boehner and Cantor have been able to count on his support as much as George Bush always did. The Democratic caucus will be infinitely better off without him, even if fellow Blue Dog Brad Carson, the district's former congressman, wins the seat.

With Boren gone the once-mighty Blue Dog caucus of rightists and racists will have been cut down from 54 to 23. That's 23 too many. As Politico reported, former Tennessee Rep. John Tanner, a leading conservative Democrat who helped found the coalition in 1995, acknowledged that the Blue Dog wing is, for the time being at least, struggling for survival.

“It ought to concern us from the standpoint that we need to put aside strongly held philosophies,” said Tanner, who retired last year.

Former North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy, a Blue Dog who lost his seat last November, put it more directly: “I think you could say this was the most disastrous House election that Democrats ever had, and those who paid the highest price were those in swing districts and those who were Blue Dogs.”

While Boren didn’t announce his plans, many in the growing ranks of former Blue Dogs have beaten a path to the lucrative environs of K Street, where they aren’t regularly berated by progressives who resent their departures from party orthodoxy or Republicans insisting they are tools of a liberal national party. In just the past few months alone, former South Dakota Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, former Tennessee Rep. Bart Gordon, Pomeroy and Tanner are among those who have taken the lobbying path.

I was on the phone with a senior progressive Democrat when the news of Boren's retirement hit the transom. I asked her if she had heard the news about Boren. And she shot back, "Did he finally make if official and switch parties?" I told her he was retiring and she asked me if I knew he was related to Paul Ryan by marriage. Boren, who's on the Board of Directors of the NRA, didn't endorse Obama in 2008 and voted against healthcare reform and was always strictly anti-Choice.

Last November Blue America helped defeat the only Democrat with a worse voting record than Boren: Bobby Bright, an Alabama Blue Dog. This year our ActBlue page, Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand is assisting progressives who fighting for nominations against Blue Dogs and other conservative Democrats. We have three on our list so far and if you'd like to help them in their struggle we'd be most appreciative.

So What's Wrong With Ed Case? Is He Really Worse Than Joe Lieberman? Worse Than Tom DeLay?

Thursday, when Hawaii's stellar progressive congresswoman, Mazie Hirono, announced her intention to run for the seat being vacated by her friend and ally Daniel Akaka, we dashed off a quick post that detailed some of the specifics on Ed Case's long rap sheet of corporate shillery and conservative complicity. When he was in Congress his career was distinguished by two characteristics-- he was the closest thing the Democratic caucus had to a conservative Republican and he was the laziest Member of Congress with the worst attendance record.

The post pointed to his support for Republican and corporate initiatives like job-killing trade legislation and to special interests legislation like abolishing the estate tax for the super-rich, making it easier for banksters to rip off consumers, screwing over working families on pensions and the never-ending Republican proposals to shift the tax burden to the middle class. He generally voted with the most reactionary Democrats when they joined the GOP to stifle reform and, we tried to make the point that anyone who likes Chamber of Commerce pawns and Patriot Act-type Dems like Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK) and Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN) will be perfectly happy with Ed Case-- especially if xenophobia and war-mongering and making sure that victims of big corporations have no recourse to the courts are on the menu.

But in our rush to put up a place to donate to Mazie's campaign, we left off one of the most important factors in Case's long and shameful record-- his disregard for the rights of women when it came to choice and his siding with right-wing extremist against women. Back in 2005 when Case was an astoundingly bad congressman, his Republican allies tried to defund Planned Parenthood by cutting Title X family planning out of the budget-- just as they've done this year. This year Mazie Hirono strenuously opposed that, of course. Back in 2005 an amendment by far right sociopath Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) targeted NPR, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Title X family planning all in one shot. Only one Democrat crossed the aisle to vote for the most extreme piece of legislation of that session... Ed Case. Not even a majority of Republicans were that extreme (in those days). 197 Democrats and 122 Republicans voted NO and it failed 102-320. But Case voted YES, something even right-wing extremists like Darrell Issa, Steve Pearce, Denny Rehberg, Devin Nunes, John Culberson, Buck McKeon and Jerry Lewis, all of whom voted for essentially the same crap this year, were unwilling to do then. Even Tom DeLay and Henry Hyde found it too extreme and voted against it!

Case's backers in Hawaii try to portray him as socially moderate, rather than a reactionary extremist. But he's never explained to the women of Hawaii why he voted against funding for Planned Parenthood. There's no reason he should even be running as a Democrat. The guy has a clearly Republican voting record and it would be nothing short of catastrophic to reward his perfidy with a Senate seat. A Senator Case would make Ben Nelson and Joe Manchin look liberal. Let's help make sure Mazie replaces Dan Akaka and not the right-winger who tried to beat Akaka in a primary 5 years ago. Please consider contributing to Mazie's campaign here through ActBlue. Sending Ed Case to the Senate is tantamount to sending a conservative Republican to the Senate.

Can The Democrats Find A Worse Candidate Than Joe Manchin Or Ben Nelson? Try Joe Donnelly

This year there have been a baker's dozen Democrats who have consistently voted with Boehner and Cantor on almost every big issue. Dan Boren is, by far, the worst-- with a ProgressivePunch score of 15.15, worse than 2 dozen Republicans. The next most reactionary Democrats, all Blue Dogs of course, are Mike Ross (AR), Jim Costa (CA), Jason Altmire (PA), Collin Peterson (MN), Henry Cuellar (TX), Jim Matheson (UT), John Barrow (GA), Ben Chandler (KY), Dennis Cardoza (CA), Tim Holden (PA), Mike McIntyre (NC) and Joe Donnelly (IN). When you take the district's partisan tilt into consideration, though, Donnelly, who represents a Democratic-leaning district (his constituents went for Obama over McCain 54-45%) drops to the very bottom of the pile. His -42.93 score trumps Boren's negative 40.89. So who has the Democratic Party decided to move up the Beltway political ladder? Yes, virulently anti-Choice, antigay, pro-corporate Joe Donnelly. A.P. reported yesterday that Donnelly will announce a run for Lugar's Senate seat today.

Two Democrats with firsthand knowledge of Donnelly's plans told The Associated Press that the congressman is entering the race because he believes that Lugar will lose a Republican primary offering him a path to the Senate. Lugar is facing a strong challenge from his right, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock.

The Democrats spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to pre-empt Monday's announcement.

By entering the race, Donnelly-- who also weighed a run for governor-- gives national Democrats a recruiting victory. No other Democrats have entered the race. Donnelly's supporters believe he can clear the Democratic primary field.

A recruiting victory? Don't Democrats ever learn? Because of conservative corporate shills like Donnelly, Democrats and left-leaning independents didn't bother turning out in the 2010 midterms. "There is no difference between the two parties" may not be true where you're from, but it is true in Donnelly's case. And if Lugar does win renomination, a case could be made that he would actually be a better choice than Donnelly!

Yesterday, coincidentally, I was trying to find the worst corporate shills in the Democratic House delegation. I decided to see how many who have voted against the DISCLOSE Act (H.R. 5175) had also voted for the Republican effort to end voluntary public funding for presidential elections (H.R 359). Only 4 Democrats had voted the corporate line on both, Donnelly being one. But it's hard to find any issue that distinguishes the two parties where Donnelly comes across unambiguously as a Democrat. Even if you forgive him for being fanatically anti-Choice (I don't)-- he is also fanatically anti-contraception, voting against Planned Parenthood all three times the GOP tried to kill it since 2007. And if you, for whatever reason, think marriage equality is too radical for Indiana, what about Don't Ask Don't Tell? A clear and overwhelming majority of Americans agreed with the Democrats-- and the Pentagon-- that that bigoted anti-gay rule was outdated and dysfunctional. But not Donnelly. He was one of only 26 Democrats who fellow Blue Dog Patrick Murphy couldn't persuade that it was time to give up on DADT. Even 5 Republicans voted to end the discredited policy. It passed 234-194 with Joe Donnelly once again on the wrong side of history. It's absolutely perverse for the DSCC to even consider recruiting a slouch like Donnelly who will do nothing but confuse voters about which party stands with working families and which party stands with Big Business. In fact just last week, the GOP brought up 3 bills rewarding Big Oil-- and Donnelly was one of the few Democrats to vote with the Republicans all three times. He was also one of the few Democrats who ran TV ads attacking Nancy Pelosi and Democratic energy and immigration policies in last year's midterms. If you think Ben Nelson and Joe Manchin and Blanche Lincoln are good Democrats, you'll love Joe Donnelly in the U.S. Senate as well.