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Why Griffith Switched

The big political news today has been Rep. Parker Griffith’s party-switching: Mr. Griffith, a lifelong Democrat whose victory in his Huntsville-area district last year helped the party hold a seat in an increasingly conservative district, said he was surprised by the party’s legislative focus this year on health-care and climate-change legislation. And he was miffed […]

The big political news today has been Rep. Parker Griffith’s party-switching:

Mr. Griffith, a lifelong Democrat whose victory in his Huntsville-area district last year helped the party hold a seat in an increasingly conservative district, said he was surprised by the party’s legislative focus this year on health-care and climate-change legislation. And he was miffed by the Obama administration’s decision not to deploy a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe; much research for that system takes place in his district [bold mine-DL].

This last item might help make sense of a move that otherwise seems to make little sense. The missile defense decision directly and adversely affected his district, or at least it deprived the district of federal money that it was receiving, and it was not a decision that Griffith could have reasonably expected to happen. Almost until it happened, there was little reason to think that Obama would pull the plug on the project. One of the fair criticisms of the decision was that it was taken without much consultation with the Polish and Czech governments, and it is even more likely that members of Congress whose districts were going to benefit from the construction of the system were not alerted to the decision. Griffith could have felt that he was blindsided by a decision that would put him in a difficult position come next fall, as he would be identified with an administration that had killed a project that would have brought some gvernment largesse to his voters. On top of this, he might have actually thought the missile defense system was a good idea.

As important as the pieces of domestic legislation are, it doesn’t make sense that Griffith would bolt because the leadership was pushing ahead with these bills. Obviously, Griffith had to know what the priorities on the Democrats’ domestic agenda were going to be. It also had to be clear that he was not going to suffer any retribution from his leadership or the DCCC for breaking with the leadership on major pieces of legislation, because he had not suffered any thus far. Climate change and health care legislation could not have surprised him, and he wasn’t under pressure to vote for any legislation that would jeopardize his re-election. Party-switching would be a much more understandable response from someone like Teague in southern New Mexico, whose carbon tax vote may doom him next year, but it seems a strange thing for a “lifelong Democrat” to do when he is not even forced to vote for bills that will prove controversial.

It makes more sense that Griffith went over to the GOP to protest a decision that cut his district out of some unnecessary, wasteful “defense” spending. That means that the GOP has just brought in a new member whose adherence to their party came about because of a desire for earmarks for his district and support for a misguided, unnecessary and provocative military program. It seems that he joined the right party.

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