Since I have spent a fair amount of time here bashing the analysis of Cokie Roberts, I feel it's only fair that I should note that her story on NPR this morning was actually reasonably good. Of course it was not news. The Republican leadership in the House has been reining in committee chairmen for years, and the awarding of committee chairmanships has been dependent on who toes the party line and raises money for the party for at least 3 or 4 Congresses now. Despite what you might read in your school text books, seniority doesn't control those matters in the US House. But Cokie's report did a decent job at explaining how the process works. Where she was wrong was when she suggested this was new, and that Hastert was finally learning how to control his troops.
Something she could have mentioned considering her topic (the awarding of committee chairmanships in the US House) is that Californians now run a host of major ones - Ways and Means, Appropriations, Rules, Armed Services, Natural Resources, Homeland Security (those are the ones that I can name off the top of my head). While there are no Californians in the top party leadership positions, their influence will certainly be heard in the caucus and in the major committees. And of course even in this era of strong party leadership in Congress geographic interests and alliances still count for something.
Posted by armand at January 10, 2005 10:04 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics