Pelosi and Lott Provide Fodder
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published November 16, 2006, 2:44 pm in News, Voting & Partisanship.
Sometimes I worry that I am going to run out of things to say. That I will have exhausted all of the major political topics and will have to move over to talk about fasion and gossip.
But our government always assuages my fears about this. They always do things that just beg comment from people like me. Everyday, the headline is something good. Today, it's once again about votes. Not our votes, but the votes of the Democrats and Republicans deciding who their leaders of the new Congress will be.
The Minority What?
Before I get into the voting, I want to spend just a little time talking about the different positions within Congress. I know I always hated it when I would read about the Minority Whip and have no idea what that meant. If you remember everything from your high school government class, you can skip down a section. If you're like me, a refresher course is always nice.
There are five basic positions with both the House and Senate. The House itself tends to be more partisan, where members of each party vote as a party. Therefore, the leaders of the parties tend to have more control. So the House Majority and Minority Leaders tend to be more important than the same positions within the Senate.
First, there is the Speaker of the House (in the Senate, it is the President pro tempore). This position is elected by the House as a whole, so the Speaker could potentially come from the minority party. In our case, it is Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca). Until the new session--the 110th--is convened in January, it is Speaker-designate or Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi. The Democrats voted this morning overwhelmengly in favor of Pelosi. It's important because she is first woman ever to hold that post. She will also be second in the line of presidential succession, just behind the Vice President. That means, that if both of them happen to lose their positions for whatever reasons, Nancy Pelosi will become President. It sounds like a TV show, doesn't it? The Speaker fulfills an important fuction as leader of her party. She also presides over the House floor, although she designates other members to preside over specific debates.
The majority party also elects its number two and three positions, which are called the Majority Leader and Majority Whip (in both the House and Senate). These are the terms I used to have trouble with. There are Minority Leaders and Minority Whips, too, and they fill the same functions for the minority party. The main difference is that the Minority Leader is the leader of the minority party. For the majority party, this leadership role is fulfilled by the Speaker, not the Majority Leader. The Leader--whether Majority or Minority--determines which legislation will be presented by the party and how the party will vote. Becuase the House is so partisan, there is little disagreement here. If the party say "yes" or "no," most members of the party vote that way.
The Whips are the wingmen. They are there to try to make sure that the rest of the party votes the way the party wants them to. That's their job, to try to convince the members of their party to vote like the party. Imagine a tough crowd...For some reason, I think someone like Bill Clinton would be good in this role.
What has happened this week is that the majority and minority parties voted on their leaders--the Speaker, Majority Leader, and Majority Whip, in the Democrats' case, and the Minority Leader and Minority Whip in the Republicans'.
In this corner, the Democrats!
Let's start with the less juicy but potentially more interesting party: the Democrats. Rep. John Murtha (Pa) and Rep Steny Hoyer (Md) have been duking it out for the title of House Majority Leader. Because the parties actually vote on their leaders, the candidates have "campaigns" that can and do include everything from speeches, letters, bullying, conversations about "remember when I did X for you?," to forcing representatives to declare their support, sometimes in writing. It's an anonymous vote, but loyalty is still important. Pelosi made it even more important when she came out this weekend and supported Murtha, her long-time friend over the leading Hoyer.
It makes sense that she would back Murtha over Hoyer. Her and Hoyer have been rivals for leadership positions within the House for quite a while now, while Murtha has been one of her strongest supporters. So when it came time to return the favor, she naturally obliged.
And then the furor began. Every paper in the country began running a smear campaign against Murtha. Look it up, and you will see what I mean. Whether it's the Washington Post or the New York Times, suddenly, this guy was news. Why? Becuase, well, he's a politician of the old guard. He's a "pay to play" kind of guy. Sure he was invovled in the Abscam scandal of the early eighties, but we have to remember that he was cleared of any wrongdoing. (Supposedly he told the guy trying to bribe him that he wasn't interested...at this point.) But his work on the Appropriations committee is now drawing fire and implications. Murtha wanted the leadership position, though, and he and Pelosi supposedly began strong-arming people into voting for them. Whether this is true or not, who can say. The fact that Murtha is so embroiled in these kinds of scandals says something about Pelosi's leadership, however. She should have kept her mouth shut like she said she would.
Perhaps it doens't matter, because the Democrats voted for Hoyer as the Majority Leader, the number two spot. The Majority Whip will be Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.). Congratulations Hoyer and Clyburn.
What this means is that even though the Democrats voted for Pelosi, they won't do whatever she says. She may not be weakened that much, but she is far from invincible.
And in this corner, the Republicans!
For the Republicans, things are even better. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell (Ky) will be the Minority Leader and Trent Lott (Miss) will be the Minority Whip. Happy days are here again! You may remember Trent Lott from his support of Senator Strom Thurmond. You know, where he went to Thurmond's 100th birthday party and said that if the old guy had been elected President when he ran on a segregationist campaign, we "wouldn't have had all these problems." That was December 2002. Then the President and others forced him out of the Majority Leadership position and installed Bill Frist (Tenn).
Why would they welcome this guy back? Because they need him now that they're the minority party. They need his skills as the Minority Whip to make sure they stand united as a party. It'll be a tough job, too, what with all of the disquiet surrounding the President. On the one hand, the Republicans will want to stand behind their commander, but on the other hand, they may feel the need to distance themselves.
We'll just have to see what happens.
Comments & Trackbacks
By JT December 1, 2006, 11:56 pm. PermaLink
"The Whips are the wingmen" is definitely the quote of the day.
also, did you see that recent New Yorker where a parody-version of GWB calls Pelosi "Cobra Lady," and that guy from Nevada "Cactus Butt"? ha, ha!
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