The Republican Eight who crossed the aisle to vote for the Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill may face some angry conservative voters. But they aren’t the only ones for which the cap-and-trade vote may be toxic. Politico reports:
Republicans believe a handful of junior House Democrats may have taken a career-ending vote by supporting the controversial energy bill last week and are planning to launch an ad campaign in targeted districts to try to seal their fate.
The National Republican Congressional Committee is planning to air TV and radio commercials and unleash robocalls against Democrats who hail from districts that could be adversely affected by the narrowly passed legislation, are GOP-leaning or both.
Those likely to find themselves with targets on their back after the 219-212 vote: freshman Reps. Harry Teague of New Mexico, Betsy Markey of Colorado, John Boccieri of Ohio, Thomas Perriello of Virginia and Alan Grayson of Florida and second-termer Zack Space of Ohio.
The GOP’s hope is do to these vulnerable Democrats what Republicans famously did to former Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, the Pennsylvania Democrat who ensured that her career was limited to one term when she cast the deciding vote for President Bill Clinton’s budget package in 1993.
It isn’t clear whether this will be a defining vote the way the 1993 energy tax vote was. What is clear is that members from states where their colleagues opposed the bill — the Midwest States in particular — will have a hard time justifying why they didn’t put the interests of their constituents first, as others from their state did. And if those “jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs” Nancy Pelosi talked about do not emerge, then everyone who voted for it — as well as for the stimulus and other defective elements in the liberal agenda — will be at risk.