posted on July 23, 2012 byEric Rauch
House Democrats Refuse to Fund Pelosi’s Sinking Ship

pelosiIn what may be some of the most welcome news to come out of Washington in the last few months, Democratic House members are refusing to pay dues and kick in their own money to help finance fall reelection campaining. Politico reports:

Democrats say they’ve tried just about everything to get their colleagues to open their wallets. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has told members that unless they pay their dues in full, they won’t get to partake in the committee’s Democratic National Convention package, complete with access to much sought-after hotel rooms and parties. And in early June, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tried to shame her members into giving, distributing notes to each of them with a request for cash and asking them if they are part of “the team.”

This is all very interesting. It has often been said that if you want to know what a person really believes, look at their checkbook. If even Democratic members of the House are not getting in line for their serving of the White House kool-aid—and all but conceding a Republican victory in November—this could be the handwriting on the wall of what America really thinks.

Senators and presidential staff are notoriously out of touch with what real Americans are concerned about, but House members, representing a smaller number constituency, should have a better idea. Perhaps these Democratic House members have come to terms with losing their jobs in November, and have no interest in throwing handfuls of their own cash at their own inevitable demise. One can only hope.

This really goes to show that ideology only gets you so far in Washington. It’s not enough that these politicians give lip service to Obama and his political takeover of America; the Democratic elite want their fellow ideologues’ money more than they want their vocal support. Pelosi’s threat of “not being part of the team” is a telling clutching at straws. Pelosi knows that if she can’t even get her own political compatriots to pony up cash to help keep their own offices, she has an uphill battle with the rest of America. When you can’t get ‘em, shame ‘em. And apparently, “being a part of the team,” isn’t worth as much to others as Pelosi thinks it should be.

With Mitt Romney’s nearly inexhaustible personal funds, money has become a major issue for the Democrats. They are running scared. They are nearly $4 million behind the Republicans for their congressional committee, which to them spells imminent disaster. Which also means that they don’t even believe their own polling data regarding what the majority of the country supposedly believes. And there is good reason for this: polling data is typically ineffective and misleading, not to mention wrong, most of the time. You see, the polls are not for them; they are for us. Most politicians (by this I mean the jaded cynical types who have long since abandoned the idea of “representing the people”) pay no attention to this data, except when they are trying to win public approval on a controversial topic. Most politicians do not care about anything other their own self-preservation and financial considerations; they could frankly care less if they are accurately representing the “will of the people.” And this is why learning that an increasing number of Democrats are refusing to subsidize their own party’s reelection mechanism is such great news. Rats and sinking ships come to mind.

Read more: House Democrats Refuse to Fund Pelosi's Sinking Ship : Political Outcast