(Not so) brief history of leadership in Congress.
Basically, Speaker Henderson in 1899 saw a need to divide the duties of party leadership from that of leading the matters of the House of Representatives. The distinction has blurred over time, but in other ways, still remains. Note how in the last several years Majority Leader Tom DeLay was much more active in leading congressional Republicans than was Speaker Hastert.
Technically, though it’s hard to forget in these UltraPartisan times, the Speaker is the leader of the entire house, not just their party.
-Joe
I would like to see the Democrats choose Murtha. Then I would like to see them make bold political moves in line with what they believe.
I’m torn. I’ve heard both of them interviewed on NPR, and Hoyer came across a whole helluva lot better than Murtha, who sounded like he had incipient Alzheimers. Murtha’s ethics problems (incl. ABSCAM and pork-barreling) are troubling, too. But Pelosi clearly prefers Murtha, and she’s the one who’ll have to work with him. He also has better military credentials than Hoyer, which will probably be important as we work our way out of the Iraq mess.
I guess I’d vote for Murtha, if I were in the Democratic majority, but I’d be holding my nose and hoping that Pelosi did all the heavy lifting anyway.
Pardon me if I’m reading too much into your post, but… Is this because you think they will fail?
I really don’t know that much about either of these guys but I do find the ethics issues surrounding Murtha to be troubling and the sort of thing that could overshadow getting stuff done. Corruption played a big role in the Democratic victory in these elections and I think the Dems should avoid having people in leadership roles who have even the appearance of not being strong on ethics issues.
Just to clarify, in my last sentence I should have said that “The issue of corruption played a big role…”, i.e., the voters were reacting to various corrupt and unethical practices of the Republican leadership.
On the Murtha Abscam thing… I watched the video on YouTube, and say Murtha interviewed on Harball today, and I say “no big deal”. He didn’t take a bribe, he was not found guilty, and it was 25 years ago. Maybe if it was 5 years ago, but I just can’t get excited about it as it actually was. BTW, Murtha claimed he has the votes, no doubts, so we’ll see. All the papers seem to be calling it for Hoyer.
They’re both saying they have the votes. Murtha also doesn’t seem to be a strong supporter of the ethics reforms that the Democrats have talked about, so as much as I’m trying to care about the results more than the personalities, I have to hope that Hoyer gets the nod here.
OK, I feel pretty supid asking this quesiton but… Do the newly elected Congresscritters get to vote? Seems like if they do, they’d have little chance of casting an intelligent vote since mostly they just jumped into the fray a week ago.
Pardon my shallowness, but all I see is two ugly old white dudes, one a crypto racist and the other with ethics questions. This is not the type of bold new leadership image the Democrats need to project. Why does it have to be down to those two? Are they legally bound to choose old coots or something?
CNN says Hoyer has won.
Hoyer is a crypto racist? [Searches] Ah, I see. You’re thinking of his use of the word “slavish” to describe Michael Steele’s support for the Republican party. That’s very iffy, in my book. Anyway, now the Dems have to work to put this behind them.
Yep. I just lost a lot of confidence in Murtha after the way he bragged about having the votes yesterday-- it wasn’t even close. From CNN’s web site:
I thought that was iffy, too, and even said so in a thread I OPed about the “slavishly” remark, but then I found out he also had called Steele a “token” candidate, as well, and my IMHO, this kind of stuff is like icebergs; you only see the teeny tip of it.
No matter…they chose that ugly old white dude over the other ugly old white dude. I’m sure ugly old (Democratic) white dudes are clinking glasses somewhere…
That doesn’t strike me as racist either. Oh well. Pelosi seems to have been a total klutz on this issue, although if she maintains some party discipline people will forget about it fairly quickly.
According to Drudge it’s Hoyer.
Guess we can close the thread. 
-Joe
I’d be interested at this point in someone giving their thoughts on what, if anything, it means? Hoyer is perceived to be much more of a moderate after all. Does this mean a consious move by the majority of Dem’s toward the center…or really mean nothing more than Hoyer has been in the government since the gods were young? Or is it a reflection on Murtha’s rather cloudy past (I’m with John Mace on this one…I think it was 25 years ago and long in the past. The Pork Barrel thing is maybe more of a concern…though I think Hoyer and most of the other creatures, regardless of party, generally do the same types of things)?
-XT
I think they’re just giving the job to the guy who was next in line - Hoyer was almost minority leader before Pelosi got it, and he was her second-in-command. I don’t know if there’s an ideology behind it. It wouldn’t mean much if Pelosi hadn’t endorsed Murtha, which was apparently a bad move.
Well, Drudge was just quoting Washington Post, which unlike Drudge has some credibility in these matters. But, yeah, Hoyer got it.
No!! Now we have to start speculating about what the backlash will be! 