Has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lost control of her party, or are they following her lead? (YouTube snip)
House Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi have nixed an effort to discourage voting by non-citizens in local elections just one week after they voted to impose additional restrictions on the Second Amendment rights of citizens in what a growing number of people see as a rush toward a constitutional collision.
According to the Washington Times, the 228-197 vote “came as part of a broader debate on Democrats’ major legislative priority this year, HR 1, the ‘For the People Act,’ which includes historic expansions of voter registration and access, as well as a major rewrite of campaign finance laws.” Translation: Democrats insist that gun control is really “gun reform,” but election reform is really discrimination.
Fox News reported that the measure opposed by Democrats was aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from voting. The Friday House action might reinforce the belief that “the party of gun control” is opposed to immigration reform because it might reduce the number of potential voters supporting the Democrat agenda.
One week earlier, Democrats pushed through H.R. 8, the so-called “universal background check” legislation on a 228-198 vote, with help from some anti-gun Republicans.
As noted by Fox News, the Democrat effort may be all for naught. It is almost certainly “dead-on-arrival” at the U.S. Senate. Still, the vote is yet another demonstration that Pelosi’s troops are leaning ever-farther to the Left. Credit might go to the “freshman crop” of new Democrats elected last fall that seem to have assumed a great deal of control while veteran members have apparently stepped aside to let them.
Even the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about the legislation, Fox News reported. In a letter to Congress, the ACLU expressed concerns about “provisions that unconstitutionally impinge on the free speech rights of American citizens and public interest organizations.”
But there is dissention in the ranks. According to Politico, these new liberal Democrats “face resistance not just from party elders but from many of their fellow freshmen, centrists who campaigned as fixers not firebrands, moderates who are watching warily as the Democrats’ brand is being hijacked by the far left.”
It may be up to the centrists to bring some semblance of moderation back to the party, but in the meantime, Democrats appear to trying very hard to create the image of a political party running amok.
