New Dem FL congresswoman votes with GOP 4 times 1st week. Sits with GOP at SOTU speech.

[Jim Lane]

27. Usually I agree with your approach, but there are limits.

Recognizing that the district is conservative, I was willing to grit my teeth and tolerate her as a nominal Democrat... right down until the last line of the OP.

You write, "DINO's are needed if the D's are ever gonna get the gavel back in the House." That's exactly what I was thinking. BUT if she won't even vote for the Democratic candidate for Speaker, then she's not helping us get the gavel back.

OK, maybe this was just a symbolic protest vote, i.e., pandering to the right-wingers at home in a vote where her individual choice would make no real-world difference. Maybe, if the Democrats had precisely 218 seats, she would have fallen in line. It makes me uneasy, though. Someone like her, finding herself as the 218th vote (for Speaker and committee chairships), might decide to reach across the aisle and get things done, by voting with the Republicans in exchange for various forms of more-or-less-legal bribery for herself (perks beyond what a freshman normally gets) and/or her district (pork, pork, pork).

If these conservaDems want Party support despite voting for Wall Street and so on, the minimum requirement is that they stick with the Democratic Party on organizational votes.