In order to win reelection Ben Nelson and other Democrat legislators from conservative states like Nebraska must constantly distance themselves from their liberal party and cast themselves as “Conservative Democrats”. The fact is that the “Conservative Democrat” posture is largely a sham. Much of their reputed conservatism is nullified by party affiliation. It makes a great deal of difference which party is in the majority in the House and Senate. The influence of a Democratic legislator who sometimes takes positions at odds with his party is largely canceled out when he gives his party the majority in one of the legislative chambers.
The majority party in both House and the Senate wields a great deal of power. The speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader get to set the agenda for the chamber and determine the rules under which it will be considered. For the most part only those bills favored by the leader or speaker will even be allowed for consideration. The leader or speaker can also determine the rules under which legislation is advanced so as to expedite his or her favored bills and hinder the efforts of the minority party to oppose them or to introduce bills related to their own priorities.
Members of the majority party become chairmen of the legislative and oversight committees and hold a majority of seats on the committee. Committee chairmen are quite powerful and can singlehandedly determine whether or not the full chamber can even consider a bill. When hearings are held, the committee chair can decide the purpose of a hearing and who is allowed to testify. For example, Senator Kerry, the current Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee recently held hearings on the START treaty and made sure that only those who supported the treaty were allowed to testify so that a false impression of enthusiastic support for the treaty was given.
The leadership of the current Democratic Party is firmly in the hands of its most liberal faction. There are no conservative party members in leadership positions. The liberals drive the Democratic Party bus with the conservatives confined to the back. Once Democrats had majorities in the Senate and House, the most liberal members were put in charge. The only influence conservative members can exert is to extract a minor concession or obtain an earmark in exchange for their vote on the advancing of a liberal policy objective. This was clearly on display during the Obamacare debate. Conservative Democrats put up a good show of opposing this lurch toward what will eventually become national health care but in the end they all caved in and went along with their party leadership.
The liberal party leaders tolerate the more conservative members only because they are realistic enough to know there is little chance of electing a true liberal in these conservative leaning districts. The conservative members are essential in allowing the liberal Democrats to gain majority status in the House and Senate and so liberal party leaders know that they must help these members maintain the fiction of conservatism.
One of the most popular tricks employed in the Senate is to require Conservative Democrats to vote for cloture motions, which require 60 votes, but allow them to vote against the bill if their vote is not needed during the final vote when only a simple majority is necessary. This way the “Conservative” senator can boast during the reelection campaign that he voted against the liberal bill when it was actually a carefully orchestrated game to pass the bill while giving the “Conservative” Senator cover. Most high priority bills are not even brought up for a vote unless the majority leader knows how his party members will vote. “Conservative Democrats” do not vote entirely as they wish on high stakes issues but vote at the direction of the party leadership. It is dishonest for one of these Senators to sincerely claim that he opposed the bill when he had a chance to kill it by voting “no” on the cloture vote. He knew exactly what he was doing when he cast his votes and exactly what the final outcome would be. He is banking on the fact that most voters do not know what sort of games are going on behind the scenes.
During the past 2 years Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, has with the aid of many “Conservative Democrats”, put on a clinic in dictatorial control of the chamber. Customarily, bills are written by both majority and minority members in the various committee with hearings that solicit public input. After a bill is brought out of a committee the entire House debates and amends the bill before voting on it. During Pelosi’s tenure all important bills were written entirely by Democratic Party leaders in secret meetings. House committees were bypassed entirely and these bills were brought by Pelosi directly to the full House where the minority party had no chance to amend the bill. Harry Reid in the Senate employed similar methods. Republicans were shut out completely from the drafting of bills and were forced to accept or reject in whole whatever the Democratic Party leaders came up with.
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