Blue Dog? When Pat Murphy ran for Congress in 2006 he told us he would be a fiscal conservative and that he was very concerned about the increasing national debt.  Upon his swearing in back in 2007 he voluntarily joined the conservative Blue Dog Democrat Coalition.  But since joining he has failed to advance any type of conservative agenda either fiscally or socially and in 2009 Murphy has voted 99% of the time with liberal Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco, hardly a conservative voice in the Congress. The term Blue Dog Democrat came about after some conservative Democrats felt as if their party had become so liberal that their conservative views were being choked out of them by extremists  on the left and thus they were yellow dogs, a term that means party loyalists, who had become blue for lack of air.  The Blue Dog Coalition was born in 1995 to contest the extremist liberal views of many members of their own party. So where are Murphy's conservative votes?  He has had plenty of opportunity in recent months to say no to wasteful spending, pork barrel earmarks, increasing federal deficits, and increasing the size and scope of government but has broken with many Blue Dog Democrats on these major votes.  A great editorial by William Bishop on this very subject was printed in the April 27, 2009 edition of the Bucks County Courier Times. Murphy Voted YES

to the $787 spendulous bill with earmarks and wasteful spending to the $410 billion omnibus spending bill on top of that with over 9,000 earmarks to bailing out private automakers to bailing out private banks to the largest federal budget and projected budget deficit in the history of the United States to doubling the national debt to $12 trillion by 2014 to being a co-sponsor of the FOCA bill which would invalidate all state parental consent laws for minors seeking abortions. to being a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act which would eliminate worker's right to a secret ballot in union elections and mandate binding arbitration for private businesses. By contrast leading Blue Dog Democrat and former NFL Quarterback Heath Shuler (D-NC) voted no to almost all of the above.  He was one of only 7 Democrats to vote against the stimulus bill and he voted against both bailouts as well.  Here were some of Shuler's quotes on the Stimulus bill: "Members of the U.S. House chose to make it a Christmas tree.  There were things (in the bill) that they should have let stand alone.  To be honest, this is a bailout of the states, like California, which has so many problems."  Shuler also added "This is supposed to stimulate the economy.  The bill is a misuse of funds, which I predicted.” These are words spoken by a real Blue Dog Democrat who cares about fiscal solvency. Pat Murphy is not a conservative anything.  He is a liberal Democrat who votes with Nancy Pelosi 99% of the time.  Why does he try to hide this record by using the Blue Dog label?  We are still waiting for an explanation.

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