As early as Tuesday last week, the astute House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel observed what McConnell was up to and issued a statement accusing him of trading established domestic spending programs for individual earmarks: "(H)e's fighting for earmarks over funding for cancer cures, the veterans' health care crisis and 5,000 new American teachers." Those words chilled conservative Republican senators who were saying exactly the same thing privately. They did not go public because rank-and-file members of Congress are not inclined to challenge their leaders in today's climate of partisan polarization.
Indeed, while anti-pork Republican Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint have fought earmarks valiantly for three years, they are reluctant to combat McConnell and thus play into Democratic hands. Remembering how Republicans suffered from the 1995 government shutdown, other GOP senators are chary about a CR repeating unpleasant history (though it is hard to see why this time the minority party and the president would be blamed, in contrast to what happened 12 years ago).
But the overriding reason for backing away from a showdown on government spending was the feeling in both parties that elected representatives cannot return home without booty, financed by the bank accounts of American taxpayers. However, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, not known previously as a foe of earmarks, has come to the conclusion that his colleagues vastly overrate the political necessity of pork.
Rep. Blunt and Sen. DeMint met privately Friday to probe ways of enacting a clean, pork-less bill. They have not given up, but the odds against them are heavy, as their colleagues yearn to return home for Christmas. Each is a Santa Claus distributing earmarks to special interests with no thought of reform.