On Wednesday, an agreement with
Blue Dog Democrats was announced, resolving ten days of stalemate on moving the
Obama National Healthcare Plan forward. The agreement, brokered by Obama aides with the Blue
Dogs, cuts projected costs for a National Healthcare bill and exempts many
small businesses from having to providing Healthcare benefits to their
employees.
We still won’t be seeing any Obama
National Healthcare Plan pass this Summer, as the Obama Administration had both
promised and planned. This is due
to the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats flexing their new power, assuring
that their concerns now must be considered if there is to be any National
Healthcare bill passed at all.
As if in answer to my oft -repeated
fantasy of a viable, national third party, and just when the Democrats finally
got Al Franken seated, their 60th Filibuster-proof Senate vote, the
idea of a third, balancing voice in our federal government, lying somewhere
between Republicans, on the right, and Democrats, on the left, has appeared –
Hello Blue Dogs and welcome to the national stage!
As Butch Cassidy said in those
immortal words to the Sundance Kid, while troops relentlessly chased them
across 19th Century Bolivia, "Who are those Guys?"
I wondered the same thing – just
who are these Blue Dog Democrats and where did they come from? How did the Blue Dogs suddenly coalesce
into a national legislative power just in time for the sausage-making event of
the decade – trying to pass some kind of National Healthcare Plan that we can
all live with, that won’t break the treasury or send a whole lot of elected
officials into early retirement?
Officially, they are the Blue Dog
Democrat coalition, some 52 (give or take) moderate and conservative Democratic
members of the House of Representatives who formed back in the mid-90’s.
Some trace the Blue Dogs’ origins
all the way back to the "Dixiecrats" (a word mix of "Dixie," for the
South, and "Democrat," for the party), led by candidate Strom Thurmond, and the
"States’ Rights" Democrats of the 1940’s through ‘60’s; others disclaim this
heritage because, despite the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution,
the phrase "States’ Rights" is viewed by some as a code word for segregation.
Later, came the "Boll Weevils," who
some said made President Regan’s tax cutting plans of the early 1980s a
reality. Still others say the name
"Blue Dog" actually derives from "Yellow Dog Democrat," a reference
to members of the Democratic Party who felt they were being "choked blue" by
those extreme, ‘Lefty’ Democrats.
Yet others say it came from the "Blue Dog" paintings by Cajun
artist George Rodrigue (1944- ) of Lafayette, Louisiana,
which hung in the offices of Louisiana representatives Billy Tauzin and Jimmy
Hayes (both now card-carrying Republicans, I believe), where fiscally
conservative Democrats would gather to discuss legislative strategies. Rodrigue’s "Blue Dog" paintings feature
a blue-hued dog who is attributed to Rodrigue’s beloved and now deceased dog, Tiffany,
made famous by an Absolut Vodka ad in 1992. In turn, this Blue Dog may derive from a legendary
werewolf-like creature in Laurentian French communities, variously named the Rougarou
(also spelled: Roux-Ga-Roux, Rugaroo, or even Rugaru).
Wherever they really came from,
these Blue Dog Democrats may now prove to be a force to be reckoned with – a
real show-stopper for what might otherwise have been a legislative juggernaut
arising from Democratic control of both houses of Congress and, lest we forget,
a Democratic President Obama. Blue
Dogs certainly have stopped, for now, the express train that the National
Healthcare Plan rode in on. Even
with their recently announced agreement ending the ten-day stalemate, the Blue
Dogs have assured that there will be no National Healthcare Plan passed this
Summer and that national legislators will have significantly more time to
consider what, if anything, ever is passed this Fall when they return to
Washington, perhaps now voting on a National Healthcare bill in October,
according to President Obama.
National Healthcare is not
something that I am knowledgeable enough about to opine on here, or even to
suggest a way out of the current thicket – I leave that to the Healthcare
experts and others more knowledgeable.
I can only comment that, since the late 40’s days of President Truman, the
concept of some kind of National Healthcare Plan has been raised, repeatedly,
but generally shot down each time (perhaps Medicare excepted), with all
remembering so vividly Hillary’s unsuccessful attempts back in the early
90’s. Democrats’ hopes ran high
with the Obama campaign over the last years that, if he were elected, a
National Healthcare Plan would be front and center for his administration’s
plans and tops on Obama’s list of his campaign promises. Now, thanks to those Blue Dogs, that is
not such a sure thing.
And so, "The best laid schemes of mice and men go often
askew," (from "To A Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest, with the Plough,"
a 1785 poem by Robert Burns – from the Standard English Translation).