Why The California Majority Report Should be Sold For Scrap

If you read Calitics you would know that, after much introspection, liberal House members from California - Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters - have relented and voiced their support for the Iraq appropriation which would set an end date for the conflict.

Steve Maviglio reads Calitics but didn't before he clicked send about twenty minutes ago and slathered the egg upon his face, especially considering that the California progressives' shift to support of the bill was only the single biggest political story going on since this afternoon. And the article is a doozy. It shows a knee-jerk hatred of liberalism (and principles, for that matter), a defend-the-leadership-at-all-costs mentality, a thuddingly poor understanding of the fact that you might want to check Google News before you blog, and... wait for it... a hat tip to Ellen Tauscher for her work on helping whip the bill.

We all write things we'd rather take back, but I get the sense that this is the norm and not the exception over there.

I would say that the progressives' move on this bill mirrored mine. I think that too much enforcement has been stripped from this and too much of an argument given to the President to defy the resolution for my comfort. I also can't stand the fact that the House leadership larded it up with pork to buy votes, a disgraceful tactic that threatens to turn Democrats into an inverted fun-house mirror version of Republicans. And yet, this is the first bill which actually attaches an end date to our disastrous occupation in Iraq. The votes aren't there for much more, and yet progressives were decisive in this debate, ensuring that the end date reached the final bill. No war in American history has ended with one vote. This is a way to continue to build public support while really trying to end the war. And while progressives came around to understanding that and unifying the caucus, they showed their muscle to get the best bill that could possibly be done right now.

For some reason, Maviglio decides that any opinion other than that which has been given the imprimatur of the leadership is necessarily invalid. That's a positively Republican argument.

U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey, Diane Watson and Barbara Lee have announced they will vote against the carefully crafted compromise of the Iraq spending bill being pushed by Pelosi. More embarrassing: Waters and Woolsey are both part of Pelosi's leadership team.

Why are these four Californians throwing Pelosi and the overwhelming majority of their fellow Democrats under the bus?

They're not, but if they were, according to you, they would be doing so to stop 18 year-olds from dying. I know, it's really awful to rhetorically throw someone under a bus than do the equivalent of actually throwing hundreds of kids under a series of buses, causing them to die.

I don't know if this entire post was an attempt to name-check Tauscher and call her a "smart Democrat" or what, but even if it wasn't 100% wrong, it'd be embarrassing.