Political parties are the means by which a very large and complex electorate forms itself into coherent alternative policies. Effective decisions on the floor of Congress or at the voting booth come down to yes or no, this candidate or that one. The easiest way to form a coherent position is to become the party of "no". That is what the Republicans are now doing, and it looks like they have the majority behind them.
If you are the majority party, you have to be for something. That ain't easy when all the things you are for (the public option, cap and trade) are losing issues. It's even harder when your coalition is refusing to coalesce.
Jonathan Allen at Politico has this about the majority caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.
For a few hours Thursday night, the House of Representatives was in chaos.
Shortly after dinnertime, New York Democrat Charlie Rangel emerged from his private hideaway after news broke that he would be admonished by the House ethics committee.
But reporters in the Capitol rushed right past Rangel to ask House Democratic leaders about a critical intelligence bill that had just been pulled over a torture provision. The language had been inserted in defiance of leadership by House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.).
At the same time, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was slated to meet with leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus to try to salvage a routine $15 billion jobs bill that had turned into a piñata for progressives, the moderate Blue Dog Coalition and members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Any of these three issues — a floundering jobs bill, a hastily scotched intelligence authorization or an ethics committee admonishment of the powerful chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee — would qualify as a midlevel crises.
Together, these incidents illustrated a chamber in a minimeltdown near week's end.
This is the chamber upon which the Democrat's health care reform project depends. Speaker Pelosi has to put together 217 votes to pass the Senate version of reform, which no one thought would be the bill when they voted for it, and then pass legislation to fix it. This is the way we are going to transform one sixth of the American economy?
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