This was great symbology. In fact, it's become a permanent part of the lexicon, as witness today, when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Reyes called out Crazy US Rep Michelle Bachman for lying about the House version of the FISA legislation in Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
The congresswoman suggests that Democrats should simply pass the bill the Senate approved. But the people have elected us not simply to rubber-stamp the actions of the Senate, but to exercise our judgment and pass bills that are in the best interests of the American people.
One of the netroots' favorite Members also picked up on the symbology. Debbie Wasserman-Schulz gave a great, very funny speech about the stamps, including my favorite bit:
Mr. Meeks has a much bigger rubber stamp.... I feel privileged to hold it, but I don't want to hold it too long, because it will rub off.....The people on the other side of the aisle come into this room, they're checking I don't know their brains, opinions, their convictions at the door."
And now, as a Co-Chair of the Red to Blue Program, Rep Wasserman Schulz seems to have forgotten those rubberstamp days. It seems that, after all, it did rub off.
Two years is about a decade ago in Internet years, but it's just one Congress ago in political years. How can she have forgotten, so quickly, how the members of her delegation refused to stand with her on issue after issue. Instead, they rubberstamped the dictates of the Republican leadership, putting their constituents behind party loyalty on their list of priorities. We have challengers who will represent their constituents. If there are votes, or issues, where they, and Representative Wasserman Schulz feels the need to vote the economic interests of her district, or her region, in opposition to the Democratic leadership, that is something we all can understand.
But to refuse to support Democrats for these seats is to forget those days of the brainless, arm-twisting, deeply corrupt Rubberstamp Congress.
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