Votes are Tough for Republicans, Too

One of the oddest aspects of the legislative splits of the 111th Congress is that we’ve heard a ton about the political risks run by Democratic members who represent McCain-friendly districts who vote for the Obama agenda, but basically nothing about the risks facing Republicans from Obama-friendly districts who vote for the GOP leadership’s agenda’s of blocking everything. Take, for example, Representative Mike Castle of Delaware. Barack Obama got 62 percent of the vote in his at-large district. John Kerry got 53 percent. Al Gore got 55 percent. Bill Clinton got 52 percent in 1996. Castle only survives in the House because he has a reputation as a moderate. What’s more, he’s planning on running for Joe Biden’s old Senate seat. To win this seat, he clearly needs to convince people that he wouldn’t just be a rubber-stamp for a national Republican Party that can’t win anything in Delaware. And yet here he is voting against health reform. A big risk!

Beyond Castle and Joseph Cao who voted “yes” there are 33 other House Republicans representing Obama districts. And there used to be 34 until the Democrats won the open, but previously GOP-held, NY-23 seat. Some of these were narrow, but a bunch went heavily for Obama. He won 58 percent of the vote in Jim Gerlach’s PA-6, while Gerlach won just 52 percent. Obama got 56 percent in WA-8, and 61 percent in Mark Kirk’s IL-10. Meanwhile Kirk, like Castle, is vacating his seat to run statewide in a blue state. Under normal conditions you expect a popular incumbent president to win more bipartisan support for his initiatives. But that’s precisely because under normal conditions you expect legislators in this kind of situation to be afraid of defying the president. After all, Obama continues to be much more popular than the Republican leaders to whom these blue districts House GOPers are being so slavishly loyal.