Party Loyalty

This article from National Journal has been making the rounds.  Money quote:

GOP legislators from moderate swing areas, including districts that President Obama carried in 2008, are infuriating environmentalists by joining with their conservative colleagues on votes to obliterate an array of federal regulations. That lockstep loyalty sharply departs from the way swing-district Republicans behaved in 1995, the last time the GOP unseated a Democratic House majority. It also represents a high-stakes bet that anxiety about the economy and disillusionment with Obama have defanged an issue that hurt Republicans previously in such places.
...In February, the House voted to block pending EPA regulations limiting emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global climate change; even the GOP members from districts that backed Obama in 2008 voted 59-2 for the bill. (Those were the only dissenting Republican votes.) In April, every voting House Republican (including all 61 from Obama districts) opted to overturn EPA’s scientific finding that climate change posed a public-health threat.
...In coalescing behind these measures, House Republicans from Democratic-leaning areas are behaving very differently from their mirror image: As many as 20 House Democrats, mostly from Republican-leaning areas, have usually broken with their party to support the antiregulatory proposals.

This gets me thinking about the bigger issue: Republicans from these swing districts, in spite of the presumed dangers, keep voting lock-step with their party.  Even Scott Brown and the Maine Senatorial Republicans, for all their moderation in comparison to the rest of the party, vote with Republicans on all the big stuff.  Democrats from similar districts seem to be constantly voting with the other side in an attempt to show their moderation and/or independence from the national party.

My take?  Good for Republicans.  Congressmen and Senators should be voting their consciences.  I wish moderate Democrats would stop pandering to the Right and vote what they believe.  If Ben Nelson believes in a balanced budget amendment, he ought to keep voting that way and switch parties. I hope that conservative Republicans in swing districts get wiped out in 2012 of course, but if that happens they still did the right thing- we should have a clear choice when we vote for our politicians.