Whips Confide: Congress Full of Children
by
Urquhart
11/07/2009, 8:21 AM #
This, this is simply amazing. Even if you believe your potential voters are idiot children with who are easily manipulated, it's maybe not good to say so. In a publication they all read.
The House is expected to vote Saturday night on the Democrats’ health care bill, and nobody knows for sure how it will turn out.
...The phrase “herding cats” may be a cliché, but it is also a pretty good description of what it takes to secure the votes
needed to pass or oppose a difficult bill. Whips and staffers say
members may hold out for many reasons, from principles to personality
flaws.
Way to win hearts and minds. Of course, it's even more difficult to secure votes for a disastrous and suicidal bill. And somewhere in between "principles" and "personality flaws" may be such motives as "it's badly written", "nobody can tell me what it means in a convincing manner" and "my constituents will kill me".
Moving from strength to strength:
“Sulking is a huge problem — it really, really is,” says one former GOP
leadership aide. “I’d say we had at least one member per whip check who
would whip problematically because they were sulking or angry about
something completely unrelated.”
Unbelievable. Given the source, we can only hope this is reverse psychology. Such as one might use on children. There was one whip who came out as not a total moron in this story, however.
(Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.) declined to talk to POLITICO for
this story. “The secret to effective whipping is to not talk about
whipping to the press,” said Kyl’s press secretary, Ryan Patmintra.)
I certainly trust these people to take over one sixth of the US economy in a responsible manner.
This, this is just beyond parody.