Bloomberg News betrayed their sense that democracy is best served by complete deference to President Obama. Their headline was “House Republicans Set to Defy Obama Are Mostly White Men.”
Reporter Greg Giroux (who is also white, if bean-counting is important) began this way: “The core group of Republicans who are pushing the House toward a showdown with the White House over the debt ceiling and government spending is made up of 41 members -- all white men except for two.” They were studying the conservative “Caucus of No.”
This small, homogeneous group of lawmakers is exercising out-sized influence as it bucks the House leadership, eschews compromises with President Barack Obama and exerts a rightward influence on a Republican conference of 234 members...
More than half are from Southern states, their average re-election vote was 65 percent and most have served for fewer than five years in the House....Nearly all are white. Representative Raul Labrador of Idaho is Hispanic and Representative Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma is Native American. Bachmann is the only female member.
There’s no political incentive for these members to trim their sails because they represent lopsidedly Republican districts, where primary elections determine the outcome more so than general elections. The list includes Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma, Ted Yoho of Florida and Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who unseated Republican incumbents.
The 41 members won their most recent races with an average of 65 percent of the vote, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Just five won with less than 55 percent support. Obama lost all 41 districts in the 2012 election...
Bloomberg News determined the members of the caucus-of-no by analyzing voting patterns, including those in which House Republicans mostly bucked their leadership on at least five of eight key votes this year.
The analysis includes votes on retaining [John] Boehner as speaker, funding for recovery operations following Super-storm Sandy, suspending the federal borrowing limit, reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act and a rewrite of farm programs.
As usual, Giroux could apply this same critique to Obama's side. The Congressional Black Caucus is all black, and they are in lopsidedly Democratic districts and win their elections by very wide margins. Obama won all their districts. They have no reason to compromise with Tea Party conservatives. But that's somehow not a story.
