Hillarysworld

AMERICA’S capital, filled with politicos and pundits, is a noisy place. But the howls of one group have risen above the rest. The “Blue Dogs”, a group of 52 fiscally conservative Democratic congressmen, have been at the centre of the fight over health care, after threatening to torpedo the climate-change bill in June. Barack Obama invited a group of them round to the White House on July 21st. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wooed them with a bouquet of compromises. On July 29th Blue Dog leaders managed both to win a deal and humiliate Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker. Their delay is likely to prevent her from bringing the bill to a full vote before the August recess.

The Blue Dogs’ evolution has proceeded in fits and starts. After the Republicans seized Congress in November 1994, a group of mostly Southern Democrats formed a coalition to distinguish themselves from their own party liberals. They said they were yellow-dog Democrats (a traditional Southern term for a loyalist who would vote for a yellow dog so long as it was a Democrat) “choked blue” by their leaders. Their main goal has been to resist the tax-and-spend policies too often pushed by their party’s barons; their home-page features a federal debt clock that on July 30th stood at $11,226,807,380,955.11. But for much of the past 15 years they have been a marginal force.

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