Four members of Congress who are not winning any popularity contests this week are House Blue Dogs Bart Gordon of TN, Baron Hill of IN, Mike Ross of AR, and Zack Space of OH.
These members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, as you may have heard, have agreed to vote for a Democratic health reform plan, giving it enough votes to get to the floor and probably to secure passage there, in exhange for a number of concessions. Said concessions drove a group of progressive House Democrats to fury and very nearly to open rebellion.
But it’s not like the four Blue Dogs are getting any love from hard-core critics of Obama’s health care efforts. At Redstate, one of the leading conservative blogging sites, head honcho Erick Erickson’s post on the deal had this calm title: “The Four Blue Dog Democrats Who Sold Out America.” The subtitle was also pretty even-handed: “Judas only needed 30 pieces of silver to sell out Christ. How much did these four need to sell out their country? ”
When he wasn’t comparing Blue Dogs to Judas–and presumably, the existing health care system to Jesus Christ– for agreeing reluctantly to support their own party, Erickson was fulminating about Republican Senator Lamar Alexander’s treachery in deciding to support Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination and–horror of horrors!–introducing a bill to ban mountain-top coal mining.
Everybody’s a critic.