Back in the day, John McCain was the darling of the national media. The main stream news-types wrote no end of stories, lauding McCain as a “maverick” because he broke with his party on a number of issues. The media mainly loved writing these stories because they made President Bush look like a bad leader.
McCain has long since fallen out of favor with the media when he challenged the Wise and Benevolent Obama for the presidency, to which Obama clearly was entitled without the annoyance of a challenger. The “maverick” was suddenly the old, bedraggled, racist conservative of questionable legal status as a US citizen.
Now, a new breed of rebels has arisen, but the maverick label has not been applied to them. I’m referring to the Blue Dogs, a group of Democrats who have expressed – gasp – disagreement with the Beloved Leader.
Now, I always thought of the term “Blue Dog” as slang, like RINO (Republican In Name Only), Boll Weevil (a Democrat who acts like a Republican) or NeoCon (anybody who is so insidiously racist and mean-spirited that they didn’t vote for President Obama). You know, the kind of name that got applied to you by people who did not particularly like you, not the sort of thing that you’d put on your stationery.
But apparently, the Blue Dogs are an actual, definitive group. It’s an exclusive group, so don’t try to run out and sign up yourself. There are only 52 of them, and they are all in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Blue Dogs are officially a coalition. They’ve got a couple of co-chairman and everything.
For those of you not in the know, Blue Dogs are fiscally conservative Democrats. Judging by how far Left the Glorious One is pulling on the party, it won’t be long before a lot more members of the Democratic Party suddenly find themselves labeled as “conservative”. One by one, they’ll be faced with the choice of flowing with the party toward Socialism or joining the Blue Dogs.
It should make for good watching. Nothing like a little in-fighting to spice up C-Span.
