GregsOpinion.com

Kudos to David Broder for this one ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64025-2004Nov19.htmlA Blue Dog Muzzled

Stenholm is exactly the kind of conservative Democrat whom Bush embraced when he was governor of Texas and Democrats still controlled the legislature. He agrees with the president on social issues and supported the first round of Bush tax cuts, back when the budget was in surplus. The senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, he helped Republicans write the last major farm bill that Bush signed -- and his name surfaces every time there is a vacancy at the top of the Agriculture Department.

But with Republicans riding high in Congress, Bush, rather than courting conservative Democrats such as Stenholm, wants to cut their legs off. He went out of his way to plug Neugebauer when he campaigned nearby, and Vice President Cheney came in twice to help sink Stenholm.

Purging conservative Democrats is part of Karl Rove's long-term strategy for making the GOP the majority party. But it entails significant costs. When Bush tries to fulfill his pledge to reform Social Security, he will, as Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan remarked, "wish that Charlie Stenholm were still here."

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Within the Democratic caucus, Stenholm won respect for the way he resisted pressure to switch parties, even as Texas became more Republican and his reelection margins shrank. He helped organize the "Blue Dogs," a group of Democrats, mostly from the South and the border states, who tried to hold both parties' feet to the fire on curbing runaway budget deficits.

Concern about those deficits led Stenholm and the Blue Dogs to oppose Bush's later rounds of tax cuts -- "and it cost me in this campaign," he said.

In a valedictory interview, Stenholm told me he takes solace in the fact that the Blue Dogs came through this tough election relatively unscathed. Eight of their 34 members retired or lost, but four freshmen have joined the group, and runoffs to come in Louisiana could add two more.

"These Blue Puppies are very impressive," Stenholm said, referring to the freshmen from California, Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma. "They will carry on the fight."

What's more, he said, reality will strengthen the position opposing new tax cuts in the face of rising deficits. "The market will tell Bush and these supply-side Republicans that deficits do matter. Look what's happening with the decline of the dollar and with the Japanese backing off from buying as much of our debt. No one can ignore that."

He also believes that both parties will eventually have to come to grips with the unsustainability of Social Security in its current form. With a laugh, Stenholm recounted his amazement at hearing "my conservative Republican opponent make the same promise as the Massachusetts liberal [John Kerry] -- 'I will not cut your benefits, or raise your taxes or increase the retirement age.' "

"When both extremes are talking nonsense," said this defeated but unrepentant middle-roader, "there must be some way of getting them together that makes sense."