Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Yeah - Im not buying it. I’ll believe it when they all start BACKING our troops and EVERY mission they are on…

NYT

While much of the Congressional political focus has been on the declining fortunes and numbers of House Republicans, House Democrats have their own problem: They are winning too many elections.

By prevailing in conservative districts where they ordinarily would not have a chance, Democrats are widening the ideological divide in their own ranks and complicating their ability to find internal consensus. It is a nice problem to have, but it is one that can bedevil party leaders. As their numbers expand, they have to juggle the competing interests of Travis Childers, the newly elected pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-tax representative from northern Mississippi and someone like, say, Nancy Pelosi, a pro-gun control, liberal abortion-rights advocate from San Francisco who sees government as a solution.

Ms. Pelosi, who as speaker will have the job of managing these increasingly divergent philosophies, said it was to the advantage of the party and the nation to mesh such differing views.

“We welcome the diversity of opinion that exists in our country,” she said, “and we want our solutions to America’s problems to reflect that diversity.”

But the strain of balancing the political imperatives of a right-of-center to pretty far left-of-center caucus has already strained the Democratic majority in the House. In the most recent example, the party’s intricate scheme for passing a war spending bill collapsed Thursday when most Republicans sat out the war money vote and most Democrats, who oppose spending more money on combat in Iraq, voted against it.

That left the Democratic majority without the votes to pass a spending bill that, in the leadership’s calculation, is essential to protecting the party’s image on national security as well as members from conservative districts who cannot afford to be seen as failing to support troops in the field. Most of those lawmakers, including many freshmen, backed the war funds.

The money will no doubt be approved eventually, but the outcome exposed a vexing divide among Democrats on handling of the war spending. Of course, the vote also left Republicans trying to explain why they were abstaining on financing a war they support as the crucial front in the war on terror, but that is another story.

Democrats elected themselves into this situation. In picking up 30 seats in 2006, Democrats walked away with some in Republican territory, with the result that many of the newcomers are representing districts where the voters are not completely in sync with the Democratic agenda.

True, many of the seats were from the Northeast and Midwest, where the ideological gap can be manageable. But others, like Representative Heath Shuler of North Carolina, are outliers when compared to the average Democratic member. Now, Mr. Childers and Representative Don Cazayoux, a fellow newcomer from Louisiana, have the kind of conservative credentials that should put them to the right of the caucus.

Republicans say the push to protect Democrats in red and purple districts has been a significant factor in the running fight between the two parties over House procedure as Democrats have been reluctant to open the floor to Republican proposals.

“I think their strategy both in 2006 and so far in 2008 has been a political strategy, not a governing strategy,” Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said of Democrats. “You find candidates who can get elected in areas where they don’t agree with what the Democratic Party nationally wants to do. And then they get here and either can’t be a part of it or have to be put in such tight constraints that there can be no amendments offered on the floor by the other side.”

“That is part of why nothing happened last year that the majority said would happen,” Mr. Blunt said.

He was referring to the fact that in the 2006 campaign, Ms. Pelosi and her leadership team promised to treat the new Republican minority better than they had been treated by heavy handed Republican leaders during 12 years of minority exile.

But the fuller minority participation never materialized. And when Republicans were given a chance, they proved extremely adept at using procedural tactics to corner potentially vulnerable Democrats into embarrassing votes. So Democrats tightened the rules even more, sparking the fight on the Iraq spending bill that left Republicans howling they had been denied even the most basic involvement.

This intramural ideological divide is not a new problem for Congressional Democrats. Back in the days before the 1994 Republican revolution, Congressional Democrats were always split between the traditional liberal big-city wing of the party and Southern boll weevil Democrats who never met a military project they didn’t like or a social reform initiative they did.

But Democrats were able to hold power for four decades because of their imposing majorities in Congress, often outnumbering Republicans by 100 or more. That cushion meant party leaders could allow dozens of Democrats to take a walk on contentious bills, protecting their voting records while the majority prevailed regardless.

Today, even with this month’s Democratic gains, the partisan spread is 236 to 199, a growing but still relatively small margin for disagreement.

But Democrats figure if they can keep winning, they can enlarge their majority to a point where it does not matter if lawmakers on the ideological edges stray.

That fact was not lost on Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, as he pondered the ramifications of bringing more conservative Democrats to Capitol Hill.

“Each of these wins,” he said, “expands our majority.”