One increasingly gets the feeling hanging around the blogosphere that Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t be able to hang on as Minority Leader. Yesterday it was Heath Shuler, today another Blue Dog:
Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK), one of the most-conservative Democrats in the House and a member of the Blue Dog caucus, tells FOX he cannot “in good conscience support Pelosi” if she were to run for minority leader.
“I intend to support a more conservative Democratic alternative,” Boren said. But Boren would not say definitively if he might back House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) or Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC).
Hoyer has not signaled his intentions yet. But Hoyer holds significant support among moderate and conservative Democrats. Shuler says he would consider taking on Pelosi in a leadership contest if there were no viable alternative to the speaker.
And Blue Dogger Rep. Jason Altmire (D., Pa.), who just held on on Tuesday, basically said he wouldn’t vote for Pelosi again before Tuesday.
Indeed, current Blue Dog membership looks like a triage center for victims of the Republican tsunami. A lot of them just made it, and some of them didn’t.