2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumSenate to vote on US surgeon general nominee opposed by NRA
Source: The Guardian
Dan Roberts in Washington
theguardian.com, Monday 15 December 2014 18.53 GMT
The 133th Congress of the United States never got around to responding to the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting that overshadowed the final days of the last Congress so tragically back on 14 December 2012.
But despite the failure of all attempts at passing new gun control in the two years since, lawmakers will at least leave Washington this week with the sound of a symbolic vote on the issue ringing in their ears.
The expected Senate confirmation vote on Monday evening of Barack Obamas long-standing nomination to become surgeon general, British-born Indian-American Vivek Murthy, has become a proxy battle for the ongoing fight between liberals and the powerful National Rifle Association.
Back in February, the NRA effectively torpedoed four months of White House efforts to swiftly confirm Murthy by focusing on his past support for gun control while working as a physician in Boston.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/15/senate-vote-us-surgeon-general-nominee-nra-vivek-murthy
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)The White House's very bad 2014, and two even worse years for gun-safety activists, may end with a victory Monday. The Democratic Senate majority has set up an evening vote on Vivek Murthy, the young and outspoken nominee for surgeon general who was opposed by the NRA. Murthy, who'd previously spoken (and tweeted) about the dangers of gun violence, was easily halted by the gun rights lobby when his nomination first emerged from committee. "Contact your senators and ask them to oppose confirmation of President Obamas radically antigun nominee," thundered the NRA in an action alert. It worked, and Democrats decided not to make their many red-state senators take a hard vote.
Those senators went on to lose their elections anyway. The NRA's role in that, ironically, may bail out Murthy. In 2014, the standard for avoiding the NRA's wrath became so high, so pure, that no Democrat could reach it. None of the Democratic senators who attempted to shoo off the gun lobby, by opposing all of the post Newtown-gun bills, won the NRA's endorsement. Most of them were buried under NRA TV ads.
Arkansas's defeated Senator Mark Pryor suffered the biggest, splashiest face-plant. He opposed all of the post-Newtown gun bills, and was one of four Democrats who opposed the Manchin-Toomey background checks bill, the agreement forged by West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey. A year later, the NRA swung into his race on the grounds that Pryor had voted, 10 years earlier, for a reauthorization of the assault weapons ban (which failed), and that "Tom Cotton wont simply rubber-stamp all of President Obamas liberal judges like Senator Mark Pryor did with Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan."
In 2014, the standard for avoiding the NRA's wrath became so high, so pure, that no Democrat could reach it.
Alaska Senator Mark Begich fared a little better. The NRA did not endorse him; it avoided making any endorsement in his race. He took incoming fire anyway when his Republican opponent, Senator-elect Dan Sullivan, ran a clever ad in which an NRA instructor (labeled as such) attacked Begich's support for "Barack Obama's anti-gun judges."
more...
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-12-15/obamas-surgeon-general-pick-may-defeat-the-gun-lobby-thanks-to-chastened-democrats
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)NRA is the number one enemy of liberalism, strange bedfellows it seems.
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)And who are you to dictate what's liberal or progressive?
There are other pro rights firearms org that cater to liberal progressives.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)voted a certain way and the others another...obvious which side liberals are on and it is not the side of more guns.
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)I oppose the AWB and magazine limit, but I do support expanded background checks and harsher penalties for the use of a firearm in the commission of a crime.
And there are liberal gun org. that cater to the left that value their 2A rights.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)progressive positions, it is a conflict of interest.
By the way, 6 dead in Philadelphia, gun man on the loose....here we go again....
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)there are plenty of liberal Dems throughout the country that share my views, whether you like it or not.
Darb
(2,807 posts)How big is your banana clip?