Could there be "stealth" congressmen?

[robertliguori]

First, let me explain the "stealth". Here in Virginia, on election day, we have people handing out example ballots with all republican/all democratic candidates marked, for the people who don't know who to vote for for the minor offices. My government teacher, a flaming liberal, always took this oppertunity to put on his best suit (dress like a republican) and hand out democratic ballots, in hopes of confusing some hapless would-be republican.
Now, given that this tactic exists, is it not possible that some or all of Congress feels that this pledge thing is the right decision, but feel the need to make noise so the goobers who elected them continue to do so?
I realize that the simple explanation is that they are goobers themselves, but could they not be statesmen in disguise?

[tomndebb]

Without categorizing the intelligence or the ethics of either the electorate or the representatives, I think it's safe to say that the overwhelming number of Congresscritters who have leaped up to defend the 1954 construction of the Pledge based their actions on the realization that it is a no-win situation.

Bush senior garnered all sorts of unneeded points* with the electorate by portraying Dukakis as "opposed" to the Pledge when Dukakis simply vetoed a Massachusetts bill that would have been dead on arrival due to the 1943 SCOTUS decision.

The Pledge is simply a really emotional hot-button issue with many people. Note that on the issue of flag burning, the idolators on the Right have not been able to get enough votes to push through a Constitutional Amendment. Burning flags are rare enough and the PoA is pervasive enough that it is easier to dominate discussion of the PoA with emotional pleas. There are many people who are intelligent and rational in most dealings that simply see the PoA as a "necessary" aspect of citizenship.
(9/11 has had an affect on the issue, as well.)

*(Meaning he could have won handily without dragging in that issue.)