The initiative asks, “Where are the Blue Dogs?” and gives the label of “lap dog” the remaining 20-some members of the caucus. Blue Dog Democrats, like Boswell, typically represent more rural and/or politically diverse districts and have a reputation for being fiscal moderates. According to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which gleefully recounts the 2010 defeat of 28 former caucus members, the remaining members of the group constitute “Washington’s endangered species.”

Videos have been developed to attack Blue Dogs in California, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon and Utah. Thus far Boswell, a Democrat who represents Iowa’s 3rd District, has only been a target in a news release by the group. Similar releases have also attacked lawmakers from California, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

With much of the content on the NRCC page focusing on how difficult it will be for more moderate Democrats to keep hold of their seats in 2012, it’s quite obvious that the Republicans would simply like more Blue Dogs to play dead now than force a GOP challenger to run against an incumbent.

It’s hardly the first time that House Republicans have targeted Boswell, who, as a result of redistricting, is expected to face Republican incumbent Tom Latham in 2012. Following a May 31 vote on whether or not to raise the national debt ceiling, Boswell was one of several House Democrats targeted by the NRCC through robocalls.

“After spending recklessly and maxing out the nation’s credit card, [Rep. Leonard] Boswell demanded that Congress vote to increase the nation’s debt limit without making any spending cuts,” the call advised without noting that Boswell and other Democrats being targeted with the same robocall had actually voted against the bill to raise the debt ceiling.

The NRCC said the call was actually referencing a letter authored by U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, and signed by Boswell and three other Blue Dogs that asked for Congress to pass a “clean extension of the debt ceiling.”

The call’s initial claim about “reckless spending” by Boswell and Democrats was given a “mostly false” rating by PolitiFact Ohio for completely ignoring the impact Republicans themselves have had on the national debt.

The reconciliation bill, which will be the vehicle for the health care “fixes” the Democrats will add later this week, passed through the panel on a 21-16 vote. Two Democrats, Reps. Allen Boyd (Fla.) and Chet Edwards (Tex.), joined every Republican in opposing the measure. The process is starting in the House because, by law, any legislation that raises revenues (i.e., imposes taxes) must originate in the lower chamber.

The proposal now moves to the House Rules Committee, where Democrats are expected to attach the health reform language later this week before moving the package to the chamber floor. Democratic leaders have been mostly tight-lipped about the specifics of the health reform fixes, largely because they’re still waiting for the official cost estimates to come back from the Congressional Budget Office.

At least as controversial as the Democrats’ plan to go the reconciliation route has been their strategy, announced today, to pass the reconciliation bill alone, and then use an obscure rule to “deem” the larger Senate bill to be passed as well. Still, even Rep. David Dreier (Calif.), senior Republican on the Rules panel, conceded today that, if the Democrats can rally the votes behind the reconciliation bill, there’s nothing that GOP leaders can do to block the deeming strategy.

President Obama meets with members of the Blue Dog coalition (UPPA/ZUMApress.com)

With unemployment in double digits and no relief in sight, swift passage of the Democrats’ “jobs agenda” — set to be unveiled today in the Senate — might seem like a sure thing.

Well, not quite.

Not only are Senate Republicans balking at early proposals to cover the substantial costs, but moderate Democrats in both chambers — spooked by Republican Scott Brown’s astonishing Senate win in Massachusetts last month — have grown wary of big spending bills, fearing that support for such measures could haunt them on the campaign trail this year. As a result, Democrats are under pressure to scale down their jobs bills at the same time leading economists warn that the severity of the unemployment crisis demands a much larger package. The saga has left party leaders in a familiar pickle: They need to boost short-term spending to create jobs, but to do it they need the backing of fiscal conservatives — notably the House Blue Dogs — who are already apprehensive about enormous deficits. The Democrats, despite their commanding majorities, are learning the hard way that it’s no easy needle to thread.

[Congress1]“They’ve got to do something on job creation,” said Charles Stenholm, a former Blue Dog Democrat from Texas and now a lobbyist with the Washington-based firm Olsson Frank Weeda. “But people are very concerned about the debt buildup of the United States and the inability of Congress to come up with solutions. It’s a very difficult situation that Congress finds itself in.”

Front and center will be the Blue Dogs, a group of fiscally conservative House Democrats now 54-members strong. Although House Democratic leaders already ushered a $154 billion jobs bill last December, they’ll have to repeat the process in order to accommodate the changes expected from the Senate. Furthermore, the December vote was hardly a rout. Indeed, despite the Democrats’ lopsided 81-seat advantage in the lower chamber at the time, the bill squeaked by 217 to 212, with 38 Democrats opposed. Most were Blue Dogs critical of the bill’s proposal to tap extra money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program — money that was initially aimed at paying down the debt.

Rep. Betsy Markey (Colo.) was one such Democrat. Her spokesman, Ben Marter, said this week that the Colorado Blue Dog supports the idea of a jobs bill, but not the idea of tapping TARP funds to pay for it. “That’s not just a free pot of money,” he said. “That’s borrowed.”

“It’s all money we don’t have,” said another Blue Dog aide, who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record.

Other moderate Democrats are simply skeptical that a jobs bill can be effective regardless of how it’s funded. Alyson Heyrend, spokeswoman for Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah), another Blue Dog, said the congresssman “has concerns about just how much the federal government can do to create job growth.” Although Matheson voted in favor of the Democrats’ $787 billion stimulus bill a year ago, he opposed December’s jobs bill. “It’s that balancing act,” Heyrend said, referring to the need for job creation versus the push to rein in spending. “The devil’s always in the details.”

The offices of other leading Blue Dogs — including Reps. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.), Baron Hill (D-Ind.), Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) and Allen Boyd (D-Fla.) — did not return multiple requests for comment.

On Thursday, Senate leaders are scheduled to outline their legislative plans for creating jobs. The strategy — which will feature several bills, not just one as the House had passed — includes tax credits for small businesses, tax incentives for businesses that hire new employees, new infrastructure spending and funding to spur jobs in the green-energy sector. Separately, party leaders hope to extend both unemployment insurance and the jobless health-care benefits under the COBRA program. But they haven’t said publicly how they plan to pay for the bill. Early proposals to tap TARP funds, as the House had done, drew howls from Senate Republicans, who know well that Brown’s victory has stolen the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority.

And it’s not only Republicans pushing back against the thought of Congress borrowing once more to fund another large spending bill. In a back-and-forth with President Obama on Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.) said all the deficit spending is simply “bad economics.”

“It’s unfair to our children to ask them to pay these bills,” Bayh said. “Ordinary citizens are making sacrifices, and yet we want our earmarks or pet projects.”

The effects of the Brown election are also evident in the House, where the refusal of moderate Democrats to take up the Senate’s health reform bill has stalled the party’s top domestic priority indefinitely. If those election-year jitters are an indication of a trend, the jobs bill might also face an uncertain future. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is reportedly resisting the Senate strategy of carving the bill into pieces, but opposition within her own party might leave her little choice.

“It’s clear that Massachusetts has had an impact on moderate Democrats’ willingness to stick with the presidents’ agenda,” said John Schmitt, senior economist at the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. “The recent politics makes things much more difficult to pass a jobs bill.”

House Democratic leaders will have this going for them: the Senate jobs package is widely expected to be significantly smaller than the $154 billion House-passed bill. Still, many economists don’t consider lean, in this case, to be an asset. Indeed, they’re arguing that the Democrats’ proposals are far too small to tackle the nation’s unemployment crisis.

Schmitt, for his part, estimated that Washington’s stimulus effort — stretching back to the $787 billion bill — is “at least $600 billion” short of where it needs to be to tackle the jobs crisis. “They’re a factor of three, four or five off,” he said, referring to the size of jobs bill Democrats are eying this month. “They’re not winning any awards for sensible economic policy at the moment.”

The Economic Policy Institute, another liberal policy group, has summarized the severity of the jobs crisis this way:

The United States has lost 8 million jobs (5.9% of all jobs) during the recession so far, the sharpest drop since World War II. But bringing back even 8 million jobs would not return us to the pre-recession unemployment rate of 4.9% because the population has grown since then. Each month we need to create 127,000 jobs just to keep unemployment from rising. Therefore, we actually need 10.9 million new jobs to get us back to 4.9% unemployment.

Economists at EPI have outlined their own plan to battle unemployment. The pricetag: $400 billion — a cost, they say, that’s well worth the short-term effects on the deficit. “The long-term costs of an extended recession will far outweigh the additional interest payments on the national debt required to fund a major intervention,” EPI notes.

Some lawmakers agree outright. “We’re not going to save our way out of this recession,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) told Fox News on Monday. “We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession, and I think most economists know that.”

Whether the message reverberates on Capitol Hill is another story.

Kissell’s advantage, according to Public Policy Polling, is his vote against the health care bill.

Kissell’s no vote appears to have insulated him from some of the ill will toward national Democrats in the district. Despite winning it in 2008 Barack Obama’s approval rating now stands at a negative 47/50 there and Congressional Democrats get a 40/53 approval. Given that context Kissell is doing alright.

The congressman, once a hero of the netroots, irritated a lot of activists with that vote. But he’s the rare Southern non-Blue Dog in a swing seat who looks set to win in 2010.

“We are still working on that,” Hoyer said, “but I am reasonably confident. I have talked to people who have varying views on that. I am pretty confident that we can get there, essentially making very clear that any money spent on the issue of termination of pregnancy will be spent, not by the government, but by the individuals.”

Moderate Democrats, behind Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), have voiced concerns that the House bill doesn’t go far enough to eliminate the possibility that federal funds could subsidize abortions, particularly for patients enrolled in plans on the exchange.

Hoyer said he hopes to bring the Democrats’ $894 billion proposal to the floor either Friday or Saturday of this week. “I am confident of prevailing before Veterans Day,” he added.

In the case of Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), Grassley hit the nail on the head. And if the vocal Blue Dog is any indication of a trend, supporters of the public option might be in for a long autumn.

Although a few weeks ago Ross had expressed an openness to the creation of a public insurance option to compete against private companies — provided it were merely an option, as the House bill specifies — he’s now opposed even to that, The Hill reported Tuesday.

Ross credited the August recess and his interactions with constituents with leading him to oppose the public plan, about which he had previously expressed a great deal of apprehension.

“I have been skeptical about the public health insurance option from the beginning and used August to get feedback from you, my constituents,” Ross said [in a constituent newsletter]. An overwhelming number of you oppose a government-run health insurance option and it is your feedback that has led me to oppose the public option as well.”

Reps. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Mike Ross (D-Ark.) (house.gov, ross4congress.com)

By accident, simply by being polite, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) drafted the best-known opponent of one of the leading Blue Dog Democrats.

At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Coburn was on his way out when he was approached by a 25-year-old constituent, Dan Arnett. The young law student didn’t get much time to talk. “[Coburn] was on his way to Hannity or something,” Arnett told TWI. A few weeks later, Arnett got a second chance to talk to Coburn in a town hall meeting held in the eastern 2nd Congressional District of Oklahoma, the traditionally Democratic stronghold held by Coburn as a Class of 1994 congressman, held now by Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.). Arnett told Coburn about his problems with Boren, who had just voted for the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Arnett recalled the senator’s advice: “If you think you can win, you should run.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

That’s how Arnett found himself where he is today–a candidate for Congress, splitting his time between law school in Philadelphia and politicking in Oklahoma and meeting with members of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He has taken some credit for Boren’s decision to hold town hall meetings on health care, a move that came after Arnett held renegade town hall meetings because the congressman was not “meeting voters face-to-face.” And he has watched the congressman, who declined to endorse Barack Obama for president in 2008, become more and more outspoken and oppositional on the priorities of the Democratic leadership in the House.

“I’ve talked to strategists who say Boren seems unbeatable right now,” said Arnett, “but they remember that they said the same thing to Coburn when he ran in 1994. And look what he did.”

Arnett’s optimism is not totally unfounded. Boren is one of the 70 members of Congress named in the National Republican Campaign Committee’s list of potential 2010 targets. State political wags, however, are not expecting a real fight for the 2nd District. According to Keith Gaddie, a radio commentator and political scientist at the University of Oklahoma, the NRCC is only including Boren in its sights to “keep him honest.” That was the sentiment, often expressed with the same words, of other Washington-based Republican strategists who are putting heat on the members of the Blue Dog Coalition, the conservative, anti-spending Democratic caucus that was founded after the party’s 1994 electoral wipeout.

One immediate effect of that campaign has been to raise the profile of Blue Dogs, often portrayed in media coverage as the Democrats with the most to lose from the battle over health care reform. Blue Dogs such as Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) and Rep. Colin Peterson (D-Minn.) have become media fixtures as power-brokers without whom health care reform can’t work. Blue Dog Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) has said that his constituents were “coming home” to the GOP, and he needed to be “independent” to get re-elected. “The problem for Pelosi in this [health care] debate,” wrote Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post, “is that her caucus is almost too big.”

But a closer look at the Republicans’ 2010 map suggests that the Blue Dogs are in a safer position than many more liberal members of the Democratic majority. Of the 70 possible NRCC targets, only 23 are Blue Dogs. The outspoken and powerful Peterson, who recently told constituents that Democratic leaders had “screwed up” health care reform so far, is not a target, and neither is Cooper. Rep. Alan Boyd (D-Fla.), a Blue Dog opponent of the House health care bill who in 2005 was the only Democrat to engage with Republicans on the possible privatization of Social Security, is not on the list and is being challenged in 2010 by a Republican he defeated by 24 points in 2008.

And few of the Blue Dogs who’ve found themselves in the GOP’s sights face tough Republican opponents. Boren has $1.2 million in the bank, while his possible opponent Arnett is finishing up his law degree and has yet to file a finance report with the Federal Elections Commission. The seat held by Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), the influential Blue Dog whose compromise allowed the health bill to escape the House Energy and Commerce committee, contains voters who chose Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over Barack Obama by 20 points, but the seat is seen by one Arkansas Republican strategist as “impenetrable,” as is the seat of the state’s other Blue Dog, Rep. Marion Berry (D-Ark.). In fact, while many Blue Dogs represent districts carried by McCain, few of the Republicans’ best pick-up opportunities in 2010 are in Blue Dog territory.

The situation for Ross is typical. One Washington Republican strategist spoke excitedly about beating Ross, who defeated a Republican incumbent in 2000, and possibly sending a “tracker” to tape his appearances. Another strategist pointed to Ross as an example of the “keep them honest” strategy, raising the threat of an electoral challenge in order to keep him from voting for a health care deal and providing cover to other Democrats. Republicans have pushed the Blue Dogs on this all year–Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) has mocked the Blue Dogs as “lap dogs” who were no longer “the force they used to be”–but believe that their challenges have become more credible.

Republican Party strategists and independent analysts argue that it’s still prudent for Blue Dogs to act as if they’re in danger. “There were plenty of Democrats who lost in 1994 who didn’t look vulnerable in August 1993,” said David Wasserman, who analyzes House races for the Cook Political Report.

Blue Dogs, suggested Wasserman, could look to the lessons of 1994. In the run-up to that midterm election, only 18 members of the Democratic majority opposed President Bill Clinton’s budget and the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Seventeen of them won, even as the party lost a total of 54 seats.

“Bucking the administration is extremely helpful, if history is any guide,” said Wasserman. “But Blue Dogs are not necessarily the most endangered group of Democrats.”

Republicans in Arkansas, while appreciative of the rare attention the NRCC has devoted to the state, did not see many takeover opportunities. “This is my job, and I can’t tell you who a good candidate to beat Ross would be,” said Little Rock Republican strategist Bill Vickery. Most Republicans were focusing on drafting a strong candidate to oppose Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) or possibly to take on Rep. Vic Snyder (D-Ark.), who represents a more Democratic, Little Rock-centered district and is not a member of the Blue Dog Coalition. “Ross and Berry are dug in,” said Vickery. “Their personal relationships in those districts are long and deep.”

One of the Republican leaders in Ross’s district, Garland County GOP Chairman Glenn Gallas, was less pessimistic about defeating Ross and suggested that the “political winds are blowing” for Tim Griffin, a Republican lawyer who was briefly a U.S. attorney for the state but resigned after the release of emails he’d sent about “caging” (sending mail to expired addresses as a way of challenging the residence of voters) during the 2004 election. But even Gallas did not think a strong Ross challenge was in the cards. “If you want to go super-big picture, there are much worse guys who need to be defeated.”

One Blue Dog whom strategists do agree is in trouble is Rep. Travis Childers (D-Miss.), who won a special election in northeastern Mississippi in 2008 and has drawn a first-tier opponent in State Sen. Alan Nunalee, a conservative, Tea Party-attending legislator with a political base in the district. “If I was a consultant for Childers,” suggested Mississippi Republican strategist Howie Morgan, “I’d tell him to vocally oppose anything that Pelosi and the rest of the liberal House leaders and their agenda.” The strategy, said Morgan, could be inspired by Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), who has held a Republican-leaning district in the state since 1987: stand against the administration, and deny Pelosi support whenever possible. “Taylor can always say that he was the only Democrat to support all four articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton.”

Keith Gaddie, the political guru of the University of Oklahoma, says that the NRCC is only trying to keep Boren “honest.” Evidence that it’s working:

He has now decided he will hold a town hall meeting, where health care will be the hot topic. This after one of the GOPers, Dan Arnett, blasted Boren for planning to have a “phone-in” meeting rather than come face-to-face with voters on the issue. Arnett planned to hold his own meeting in front of one of Boren’s district offices.

Boren has also stepped up his profile as the sort of conservative Democrat whose comments infuriate the liberal blogosphere.

When a questioner, Ray Evans, said he believed the President wants to do too much at once and asked whether Boyd would “be willing to scrap everything” and start over to do pursue reform more incrementally, the congressman responded: “I think that is an excellent idea … we may end up there.”

Boyd’s comments are yet another indication of the difficulty facing the White House and congressional Democratic leaders as they try to pound out a health reform bill that can win the support of moderates like Boyd, who say the current proposal encroaches too much on private insurers, and liberal Democrats, who say the bill doesn’t go far enough to rein in the same for-profit companies.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) yesterday said the ideological divide is “as far apart as the two sides of the Grand Canyon” — a timely allusion coming a day after President Obama got a glimpse of just how wide that chasm is.

In exchange for putting off a floor vote until after Labor Day, the Energy and Commerce Committee may be allowed to continue its markup of the healthcare bill this week even if an agreement has not been reached between Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and seven Energy and Commerce Committee Blue Dogs over the content of the bill.

Of note, the deal worked out doesn’t include agreement on the policy controversies that have been the sticking points between the Blue Dogs and Democratic leaders, including how to approach the thorny public-plan issue. But at this point — after marathon negotiations that have included White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel — Democrats will be happy with anything even resembling progress.