The New Climate

Following up on my reflections yesterday about the new political environment is making it harder for wingnuts to be wingnutty, Joe Sudbay of Americablog reports the interesting news via House Race Hotline how many conservative Republicans have discovered they might be for children's healthcare after all:

Just a week into the new Congress, we already have an idea of who's vulnerable in '10 (or at least those who think they're vulnerable), thanks to last p.m.'s S-CHIP vote that passed overwhelmingly.

-- The biggest "aye" surprise came from Thad McCotter (R-MI 11). Yes, that's the same McCotter who heads the conservative GOP Study Cmte and who blogged during the '07 S-CHIP vote that GOPers should battle Dems on the bill, and if they didn't, the party would "not only lose the next election. It will lose its soul." So what changed? In '08, McCotter took just 51% against a Dem who raised just $29K. And he sits in a CD that Pres-elect Obama surely won.

-- But McCotter's not the only GOPer with a change of heart. FL's Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-18), Lincoln (R-21) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-25) and Don Young (R-AK AL) all voted for the package after surviving tough '08 battles. They failed to vote for S-CHIP in '07.

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