A Republican Legislator’s Votes Are A Private Matter!

Since I’ve seen some discussion on the Twitter today about whether Reid should force a vote on the Ryan destroy-Medicare-to-finance-upper-class-tax-cuts program (answer: “hell, yes”), I thought I’d highlight what is the very dumbest argument in the thoroughly ridiculous PoliFact piece I discussed yesterday:

And finally, the ad neglects another critical fact: The Republicans voted on a budget resolution that states policy preferences, but the vote did not actually change Medicare, much less end it. As we’ve noted before in previous fact-checks, budget resolutions are non-binding documents that cannot be viewed as the equivalent of legislation that establishes law. Deeply desiring something and accomplishing it are different.

I swear that it goes on to consult an expert who explains that bills based in the House do not, in fact, become part of the U.S. Code until passed by the Senate and signed by the president. You learn something new every day!

But anyway, this as about as dumb as fake-equivalence centrism gets. It’s now out of bounds to criticize the public votes of legislators? That as long as there’s another veto point they can’t be held accountable for positions they’ve taken? If taken seriously, this would make effective democracy impossible — if public positions aren’t a fair basis to evaluate candidates, we might as well pick them out of a hat. But to fake-centrist pain caucus types, this is of course the point…