Don’t Write Off the Blue Dog Caucus
Since election night, many political pundits have written about the demise of the conservative Democratic Blue Dog Caucus in Congress. What is most distressing to us is not the pontifications of the political punditry (many of whom picked Mitt Romney to win in a landslide) but, rather, the acceptance by many Democrats that the South is a lost cause.
What is so puzzling about Democrats writing off certain congressional districts, like those in our home states of Mississippi and Louisiana, is that they fail to either see or accept the correlation between winning those highly competitive House seats below the Mason-Dixon line and taking control of Congress. It is not a coincidence that the reduction of Blue Dogs on Capitol Hill coincides with Republican control of the House of Representatives.
Just a few years ago, in 2006, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel, working with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, led Democrats to take back the House of Representatives from Republicans and J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in history.
Roll Call
1/3/13
