{"id":9050,"date":"2006-11-13T13:55:53","date_gmt":"2006-11-13T18:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9050.html"},"modified":"2006-11-13T13:55:53","modified_gmt":"2006-11-13T18:55:53","slug":"murtha-vs-hoyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/murtha-vs-hoyer\/","title":{"rendered":"Murtha vs. Hoyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the elections over, and the Dems in control, the first big fight for the party isn’t with the administration or the outgoing GOP majority, it’s within — Dems need to fill leadership posts. The party avoided one contentious fight<\/a> last week on the Majority Whip gig, but the Majority Leader contest is just heating up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) endorsed Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) yesterday as the next House majority leader, thereby stepping into a contentious intraparty fight between [tag]Murtha[\/tag] and her current deputy, Maryland’s Steny H. [tag]Hoyer[\/tag]. […]<\/p>\n

[I]n her first real decision as the incoming speaker, Pelosi said she was swayed by Murtha’s early stance for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Her letter of endorsement yesterday made clear that she sees Iraq as the central issue of the next Congress and that she believes a decorated Marine combat veteran at the helm of the House caucus would provide Democrats ammunition in their fight against congressional Republicans and President Bush on the issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is shaping up to be more about personal relationships than ideological grudges. Support crosses over intra-party factions — Hoyer enjoys support from some leading progressives, including Barney Frank and Maxine Waters, as well as conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats. Murtha, meanwhile, has the backing of liberal champions like George Miller, as well as several middle-of-the-road types.<\/p>\n

Personally, I don’t have a favorite in this fight, but there’s one common belief that should probably be straightened out: Murtha is not a liberal champion.
\n
\nMy first exposure to Murtha came when I worked at AU<\/a>. Congressional Republicans would mount frequent attempts to gain state-sponsorship of the Ten Commandments — and Murtha was always one of a handful of House Democrats who would join them. In 1999, when the GOP tried to push through a measure to make it easier for states to impose school prayer, Murtha joined them on that, too.<\/p>\n

In 2000, the Christian Coalition published a scorecard of every member of Congress. The group went out of its way to make Republicans score higher, but Murtha managed to get a 48% score — one of the higher ratings for a Dem in the House — after backing the conservative line on anti-abortion measures, in opposition to campaign-finance reform, and against gay adoption.<\/p>\n

To be clear, I like Murtha. He’s a decorated war hero who, after initially backing Bush on the war, hasn’t pulled any punches. He’s shown nothing but courage and leadership on national security issues his entire career. The right-wing smear against him was ridiculous, but he never faltered or backed down.<\/p>\n

But truth be told, neither Murtha nor Hoyer are progressive by any reasonable definition of the word. I enthusiastically agree with every word in Kevin Drum’s analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On both economic and social issues he’s more conservative than Hoyer (who is himself already in the rightward half of the Democratic caucus). He’s pro-gun and anti-abortion (0% from NARAL!). And while I’m annoyed that Hoyer voted for the bankruptcy bill last year, Murtha voted for it too. Matt pointed out that Murtha is more conservative than Hoyer based on Keith Poole’s computer-generated models, and that matches up with National Journal’s more traditional rankings for 2005 based on roll call votes.<\/p>\n

I don’t really have any big axe to grind here. Hoyer is too close to K Street for my taste, and both Hoyer and Murtha are more conservative than I’d like. I appreciate Murtha’s anti-war stand, but since it’s based more on troop issues than on progressive foreign policy principles I’m not sure how happy I’m likely to be with his future positions on national security issues. Bottom line: This race is probably a bit of a tossup, and I wouldn’t leap into bed with Murtha too quickly just because he took on Bush over Iraq. He’s not exactly a progressive dream candidate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My point isn’t to take unnecessary shots at a Dem leader, and I hate to see the party stoke fires of internal dissent so quickly after a landmark election cycle. I just think it’s important for Dems to appreciate the contest dynamics here: for Majority Leader, the choice is between two right-leaning Dems, one who has voted a little too much with K Street, and one who voted a little too much with the religious right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the elections over, and the Dems in control, the first big fight for the party isn’t with the administration or the outgoing GOP majority, it’s within — Dems need to fill leadership posts. The party avoided one contentious fight last week on the Majority Whip gig, but the Majority Leader contest is just heating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}