Blue Dog Coalition

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
President Barack Obama meeting with members of the Blue Dog Coalition at the White House (2009)

The Blue Dog Coalition is an alliance of financially and socially conservative members of the Democratic Party in the United States . In the House of Representatives , this group is organized as one of three large intra-party coalitions alongside the New Democrat Coalition and the Congressional Progressive Caucus .

Program

The Blue Dog Coalition consists of conservative Democratic Congressmen from all regions of the United States, but the majority from the conservative southern states . Their political focus is on financial issues in which they take a conservative standpoint ( fiscal conservative ). You are trying to achieve a balanced budget and reduce the national debt. The Blue Dogs want to create a bridge between left and right positions in Congress. The coalition was formed in 1994 when the 104th Congress the Republicans for the first time since the 1950s constituted the majority of deputies in both chambers.

There are several explanations for the name. One of them is that the term blue dog goes back to the group's first meeting places, offices of MPs from Louisiana , where pictures by Cajun artist George Rodrigue were hung with blue dogs as their subject. Another relates to the saying that certain voters would "even vote a yellow dog if he ran as a Democratic candidate".

Blue Dogs are often responsible when the Democrats can win a mandate from the Republicans; B. 2004 in Kentucky . In the 2010 elections , the Blue Dog Democrats, represented in the 111th Congress with 54 MPs, lost numerous seats and were still represented in the 112th Congress with 26 MPs. The 2012 elections reduced the number of Blue Dog MPs by almost half to 14.

The Republican counterpart is the Republican Main Street Partnership ; a group of republican politicians who see themselves as less conservative and more at the center of politics than the other inner-party currents. In part, due to the ideological proximity, there are also direct connections between members of both groups.

Members

Constituencies where Democrats from the Blue Dog Coalition were elected in the 2010 House of Representatives elections

The list of the 26 members of the Blue Dog Coalition in the House of Representatives with their constituency in the 112th Congress :

Gabrielle Giffords resigned after the Tucson attack in January 2012; Dennis Cardoza also resigned before the end of the legislative period. Dan Boren, Mike Ross and Heath Shuler decided not to run again; Jason Altmire and Tim Holden were not nominated again. Joe Baca, Larry Kissell, Leonard Boswell and Ben Chandler lost re-election. Joe Donnelly moved to the Senate . The only new member of the group is Pete Gallego from the 23rd district of Texas.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Moderate Republican group to remove 'Republican' from name, welcome Democrats , Yahoo-News, January 8, 2013