Congress votes to admonish Joe Wilson for Obama outburst

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouts "You Lie" at President Obama from the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, DC on Sepember 9, 2009 (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

It was pretty much a foregone conclusion that once Congress decided to take up the question of punishing South Carolina’s Rep. Joe Wilson for heckling President Obama, the punishment would pass the Congress by a solid majority.

And it did. On a vote of 240-179, Congress admonished Rep. Wilson for shouting ‘you lie’ from the House floor during the president’s joint address to Congress on health care last week as Obama argued that his plan would not cover illegal immigrants. John Aravosis has the language of the rebuke up on his blog, although I’m not sure it’s a censure as such.

It’s interesting to think about how much of this dispute is an in-state battle. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the Majority Whip and third in the Democratic leadership in the House, is a black South Carolina Democrat. Wilson is a white Republican from the Palmetto State. They come from two very different worlds in a small state that has seen its share of racial and other political tensions over the years. For this reason I believe that Clyburn’s motivation to drive this issue really does go beyond partisan politics. The Washington Post has made it clear in its reporting today that he really drove this issue in spite of other Democrats being ready to back off from it.

And racial sensitivities run deep in Clyburn’s politics. When one Majority Whip takes over from another, it is a tradition that an actual whip is handed from the person exiting the position to his or her successor. I remember reading that when Clyburn was installed in the position as the Democrats took back the House in 2006, he objected to this tradition because he did not like the idea of a whip, a powerful symbol of slavery, being handed from a white man to a black man.

But while there are racial sensitivities involved here, the vote wasn’t strictly partisan. According to the House Clerk’s Roll Call, 5 Democrats voted ‘Present,’ which is to say they refused to to say either Yea or Nay.

Additionally, 7 Republicans voted with the 233 Democrats in favor of the motion. Rep. Jeff Flake, an independent-minded Arizona Republican who like Senator John McCain has earned himself a reputation as a pork-buster, articulated his reason for expressing his disapproval of Wilson’s outburst:

“Congressman Wilson is a good man, and I have confidence that his apology to President Obama was sincere,” said Flake. “However, his actions violated the rules of decorum of the House of Representatives.”

“While the tenor of political debate seems to get more disrespectful every year, the floor of the House of Representatives has always provided a welcome respite. Even the fiercest political opponents refer to each other as ‘gentleman’ and afford one another civility and respect. We need to uphold that tradition.”

“Despite my suspicion that this resolution was driven as much by partisan politics as upholding precedent, I believe that it’s important to maintain the rules of decorum in the House and I supported its passage.”

And even more Democrats crossed over to vote against the motion, 12 in all. Paul Hodes, a New Hampshire Democrat who was reelected by 15% in 2008 and is not even a member of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, expressed his opposition to the Wilson rebuke in this manner:

“Congressman Wilson’s actions were reckless and disrespectful. They demeaned the Presidency, the House of Representatives, and the civil, adult dialogue the American people deserve. I found his conduct offensive and disturbing. He apologized to the President and frankly, he should apologize to his colleagues and to the American people.

But, the focus on his outburst has served as a distraction to the larger goal of providing affordable, portable, high quality health care to every family. We need to work together as Republicans and Democrats to craft a bill that seeks to lower costs, increase quality of care, and put families back in control of their health care. In my judgment, it’s time to move on and I do not support this resolution. We should not allow Mr. Wilson’s reckless conduct to overshadow the need to work together to craft a strong health care reform measure that gives Americans lower costs, more choice, and real control in a fiscally responsible fashion.”

So you will be hearing quite a few pundits criticizing this vote as partisan, and they may be right that for some it was a party-line issue. But for others, it was not. The votes for and against the rebuke of Joe Wilson were also taken for deeply principled reasons. Keep that in mind before you slam anyone’s vote on this issue too vociferously.