Whither the Blue Dogs?

During the 2006 mid-term elections, Democrats picked up a lot of seats in very conservative areas by promising to offer a fiscal sanity check to a Republican-led government that had went nuts on spending.  Many of them were rhetorical deficit hawks, and the Blue Dog Caucus grew to be one of the largest and potentially strongest on the Hill.  Now that they get their first test of the Democrat-led era, a $900,000,000,000 pork-filled welfare and infrastructure "stimulus" bill, lets look at it and see how they did.  Of the 43 members of the Blue Dog Caucus, only six voted against the record spending bill.  That's a 13% pass rate.  These are your real blue dogs: Allen Boyd, Jim Cooper, Brad Ellsworth, Collin Peterson, Heath Shuler, and Gene Taylor.  Call them or email them and thank them for standing up for the taxpayer.  The other 37 are old-fashioned yellow dogs that didn't mean a word of their rhetoric.  They were just Bush obstructionists who wanted to win in the South, West, and Rural East and Midwest.