The Pizza Putsch: Ben Nelson Driven From Pizza Joint By Angry, Booing Constituents

Soon-to-be-former constituents.

I hope the prairie states remember this. These assholes talk a good centrist game, talk up conservative values, but it's the Democratic Party Uber Alles for them.

They'll vote with their constituents' wishes... as long as it's a free vote and the Democratic Party can afford them casting a cosmetic vote "against" them.

When the party calls, however, they're on the only team that matters.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson and his wife were leaving dinner at a new pizza joint near their home in Omaha one night last week when a patron began complaining about Nelson’s decisive vote in favor of the Senate’s health care bill.

Other customers started booing. A woman yelled, “Get him the hell out of here!” And the Nelsons and their dining companions beat a hasty retreat.

“It was definitely a scene in there,” said Tom Lewis, a 41-year-old dentist and registered Republican who witnessed the incident. A second witness confirmed the incident to POLITICO.

It’s a new experience for Nelson.

He used to be a popular figure back home, a Democrat who served eight years in the governor’s office and was elected twice to the Senate by a state that’s as red as the “N” on the University of Nebraska's football helmets.

But Nelson has seen his approval ratings tumble in the wake of his wavering over the historic health care bill...

.... Nelson made his peace with the bill by striking deals on his state’s Medicaid costs and on abortion language — and, in the process, incited a furious backlash in Nebraska.

Anti-abortion activists who have supported him in the past have abandoned him; he’s been the target of a fierce campaign by opponents to push him to block the bill on final passage; and the GOP now sees the opportunity for a pickup in 2012.

And, while we're on that subject, how is super-duper-centrist and conservative Senator John Tester voting?

How about super conservative Virginia Senator Jim Webb?

Thanks to EdwardR.

posted by Ace at 05:18 PM

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