There is a sudden move in favor of making Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania the Majority Leader of the House, dumping Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer.
A couple of years ago, Murtha was a conservative Democratic from a conservative gun-loving district, a gung-ho Marine veteran, a machine hack who was involved in the Abscam scandal and escaped barely unindicted. Everything netroots hate.
Today, he is the same man, now almost 75 years old, the same slimy pork-barreling hack. But because his pals at the Pentagon who were pissed that Rumsfeld wanted to streamline their jobs blew the whistle on Iraq, Murtha has become some kind of liberal darling?
Hoyer, who is not my style either, at least has been the House Democratic whip for succesfully four years, gave up a safe liberal (black and university) constituency to help other Dems in Md. redistricting, made his new conservative-military district safe for himself, engineered the net gain of 2 Dem seats in Maryland in 2002 by DeLay-like redistricting, recruited a winning Senate candidate this year, votes moderate-liberal, speaks well, looks good and presents the kind of face to the American public that it recognizes as "one of us," not the hangdog, jowly, inarticulate, machine-crook-hack, Murtha mug shot.
Plus, what evidence exists that Murtha is up to the job of actually managing legislation outside his own committee and counting votes?
As for a leadership rift, the only discord comes from Speaker Face-Lift who knew she would have been beaten for majority leader by Hoyer but for her commanding the regional loyalty of the California Democrats, half of whom can't stand her; never believing they would be a majority four years later. SHE undercuts HIM, not the other way around, folks.
The moment it becomes public that she is blocking Hoyer, if indeed she is, her effectiveness within the Democratic caucus will be quite limited because Hoyer represents the political temperament of most of the newly elected Democrats.
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