Posts tagged ‘Patriot Act’

Hultgren votes with the Dems

by , posted on Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 at 8:35 am

Here’s a thing I did not see coming from my new congresscritter: Randy Hultgren has voted, along with a handful of other new tea-partiers in the House, to block the extension of three controversial Patriot Act provisions. And they succeeded in doing just that.

The motivation is actually quite consistent with tea-party logic – they see it as an unecessary intrusion on personal liberty – but the thing liberals need to think about is this: When’s the last time we saw a crack in the Repub block that resulted in blocking legislation that the Repubs wanted and the Dems did not? When? Anybody? Anybody?

The incident has me pondering two things this morning:

1. Where else can liberals find common ground with these Freshmen?

2. What would have happened if Progressives in Congress had displayed a similar unwillingness to “play ball” when the game itself violated their core convictions?

I could drive myself crazy pondering that latter ephemeral question, but the crack in the Republican block just delivered a tangible result.

So let’s be practical: What else can we do with this interesting new crack in the world?

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