A Bit More on Leadership
I had a hard time blogging on this one, because it seemed so very uninteresting. But it’s newsworthy, I guess - though perhaps only in its utter “unnewsworthiness.”
K-Lo tries to be ENCOURAGING, with fairly moderate success.
And Jonathan Martin DISCUSSES how it all came about.
Roy Blunt’s convincing victory was a bit more surprising to members because he was part of the “old guard” DeLay-era. Rep. David Hobson, a veteran Ohio appropriator, said he thought the Blunt-Shadegg race “would be closer,” but said Blunt “worked it very hard.” Moreover, Hobson said, the Whip post is “not a policy position,” but is about “counting votes…a mechanical deal.”
Other members took similarly pragmatic views in backing the incumbent team. For Rep. Jim Gerlach, a moderate Pennsylvanian who’s survived two close re-election contests in a row, Blunt (and Boehner) were just known quantities. “The [House GOP] Conference is very comfortable with these members,” he said.
Not all were pleased at the re-election of the two top House Republicans. Rep. Jeff Flake, a frequent Leadership critic who draws cameras for his candor, observed that Republicans “were slow earlier this year to recognize the problem and now we’re slow to recognize how we get out.” Flake, an Arizonan who backed Pence and Shadegg, said the 29-seat loss hasn’t “sunk in yet” for many in his party. Barton, who mounted his own race for Minority Leader until dropping out and backing Boehner, agreed that many were “still in denial and shellshock.”
The most interesting thing about that is the fact that there is a Republican named Flake. That’s unfortunate, in a lot of ways. Though this particular version seems anything but.
Both K-Lo and Martin make similar POINTS, though.
The message that I heard from many, many members today about why they stuck with Boehner and Blunt struck me as very similar to what Michael Dukakis was fond of saying in 1988 during his contest with Bush 41: “Competence not ideology.”
Great. I just love the way those two things are opposed to each other. Ah, well.
