POLITICS: Voting Against Mother's Day

I once sat through the SC state legislative session; I know how tedious the PROCEDURE is, but how important it can be to keep everything nice. I think the House Republicans in DC, desperate for attention and dying to do something to piss the Dems off, may have made the wrong decision on this one.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard. Worse, Republicans are now confronted with a John Kerry-esque predicament: They actually voted for motherhood before they voted against it.

Republicans, unhappy with the Democratic majority, have been using such procedural tactics as this all week to bring the House to a standstill, but the assault on mothers may have gone too far. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked yesterday to explain why he and 177 of his colleagues switched their votes, answered: "Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother's Day."

That's from the Washington Post article here. To sum up: in order to cause a delay in the procedures, and thus delaying a housing bill, they stopped a unanimous vote in support of mother's day by ordering another type of vote, which a large group then voted against, but, I believe, still passed as majority rules. IE: 178 Republicans voted against a bill supporting Mother's Day, and, instead of it disappearing into the nether realm of procedure, the bill passed and now they're on record as voting against it.

When the filibuster question came up the other directions -- Dems wanting attention -- at least they did it for something of value, and didn't go after a Mother's Day Bill.

But, whatever, mom, I still love you, even if Rep Boehner (ick, an Ohio rep) doesn't like you.