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A Whole Lot of Republicans and Democrats Voted Against Arming Syrian Jihadists
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On September 17, 2014 @ 6:22 pm In The Point | 14 Comments
So Obama asked Congress to vote for a bill arming and training Syrian rebels, even though he had already authorized arming and training Syrian rebels long before… and was already doing it.
Why did Obama decide to take the bill to Congress when he invades entire countries without asking them? Because he wants to spread the responsibility for the inevitable terrorist attack carried out by terrorists we armed and trained.
The bad news is that the bill passed. The good news is that a lot of Republicans and Democrats voted against it.
114 Democrats and 159 Republicans voted for it. 85 Democrats and 71 Republicans voted against it.
It’s oddly telling that more Democrats than Republicans voted against a request that Obama had personally asked for and that more Republicans than Democrats voted for it.
But the Dems are an adaptable lot. Two years from now arming the Syrian Jihadists will just be some Republican idea and Politfact will call it half true on a good day. All true on a bad day. (See Sequester, The)
Still the No votes are interesting.
You’ve got career leftists like Mike Honda and Zoe Lofgren voting against, but also more middle of the road types like Carolyn Maloney. Pelosi voted for it, but Charles Rangel voted against it. So did a number of other CBC’s, which makes me wonder why.
Maybe they just assumed it was a Republican idea and voted against on autopilot.
Tea Party Republicans like Bachmann and Gohmert voted against it. Arguably this was one of those decisive splits between establishment Republicans and rebels. Huelskamp, Nugent and Palazzo all voted against.
To some extent opposition came from the outliers, but not always. Some career lefties voted for it. So did Paul Ryan.
The defining division may be between those who are better informed over what is going on in Syria than those who aren’t.
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