Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) Skips DREAM Act & DADT Vote For a Christmas Party

Priorities, priorities, priorities … A Christmas party more important that votes on the Dream act and DADT.

Newly elected US Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) was AWOL for DREAM act and DADT votes. Manchin doesn’t show up for the votes because of a “family thing”? Maybe thin is exactly what is wrong, at least part of the reason, what is wrong with today’s politicians. They make their own families and themselves more important than the work of the people. There is nothing wrong with putting family first, say your spouse, child, father or mother has an emergency like a car accident or diagnosed with some terrible disease … but a Christmas party? Are you joking? Why do these people want to be politicians if instead they find every excuse not to do the work of the people? At some point these gutless politicians are going to have to vote for bills and have a track record as to what side of the fence they are on.

Instead of “Where’s Waldo”, this became more of a “Where’s Joe”? FromPowerline, we are reminded of Joe Manchin’s campaign slogan, with a new twist … “No Voting, No Labels — And No Skipping Christmas Parties, No Matter What.”

When the Senate took two of its most highly anticipated votes of the lame-duck session on Saturday, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin was nowhere to be found.

Manchin, who was sworn into office last month after winning a special election for the seat of the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), was the only Senate Democrat to miss Saturday’s votes on two of his party’s signature pieces of legislation, the DREAM Act and the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law banning gay people from serving openly in the military.

Sen. Joe Liberman (I-Conn.), who spearheaded the “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal effort, told reporters Saturday afternoon that Manchin told him he’d be out of town for “a family thing.”

A Manchin spokesperson told the Charleston Gazette that the senator and his wife had “planned a holiday gathering over a year ago with all their children and grandchildren as they will not all be together on Christmas Day.”

“While he regrets missing the votes, it was a family obligation that he just could not break,” spokesperson Sara Payne Scarbro said. “However, he has been clear on where he stands on the issues.”

 As stated at the Hot Air Pundit, this could have been  Joe’s big chance to keep a campaign promise and show everyone he wouldn’t be a rubber stamp for the Obama agenda. However, instead he turned out to be a no show. How does a Democrat miss two votes like this on two huge signatureitems for Democrats like DREAM and DADT? Joe Manchin is up for reelection in 2012 and the next two years he will play a four corners stall to show that he is neither Democrat or Republican. Manchin is in a predicament, he is a Democrat in a Red State that claims he is not an Obama rubber stamp, but refuses to vote against his party. That would render him politically useless.