The House of Representatives voted yesterday 219 to 197 against the president's executive edict legalizing millions of illegal aliens; some critics said that this vote was more symbol than substance, but it did show the division of opinion in that body.
The vote in favor of HR 5759 was almost completely along party lines, with only three Democrats supporting the GOP position and only seven Republicans voting against their own leadership.
An examination of the votes of the 10 defectors simply underlines the rigidity of the party lines on this issue; it bodes ill for any kind of coalition building, at least in the House.
This was even more evident on the Democratic side of the issue. Of the three votes in favor of the GOP position, two were cast by lame ducks who will not be in the House next month. The two are John Barrow of Georgia (the last Democratic member of the House to represent a predominantly white constituency in the Deep South) who was defeated for re-election last month, and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, who decided to retire (he also will be replaced by a Republican).
The only returning Democrat to vote for HR 5759 was Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) one of a handful of Democratic conservatives; he represents a rural area.
The seven Republicans have two quite divergent points of view.
Three of them released press statements attacking the bill from the right, saying it was misleading and that other, tougher methods should be used to eliminate the Obama edict. These were Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), and Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.).
The other four are part of a tiny subpopulation of the House — Republicans with substantial numbers of Hispanic voters in their districts. These voters are Cuban-Americans in the cases of Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (both R-Fla.), and Mexican-Americans in the districts of Jeff Denham and David Valadao (both R-Calif.).
If exceptions prove the rule, these 10 qualified. Putting it another way, the 10 represented 2.4 percent of those voting in the House; the other 97.6 percent voted along party lines.