Alright, I have always supported Cubin. One popular argument that I have heard made against her is that she doesn’t vote regularly or very often or something. I don’t really understand that because her voting record has always shown that the opposite is true, but whatever.

Now, I am not so sure if I should have been so quick to defend her. I understand that you cannot completely discredit a voting record as a whole based on one missed vote, but in my opinion this was a pretty important vote.

Yesterday, the House fell short of the necessary 2/3 vote to pass HR 6099, The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act. Barbara Cubin did not vote. The final vote was 250 yeas to 162 - just under 40 votes short of the necessary 2/3 majority, so more than just Cubin’s vote was needed. But still, there is no excuse in my mind.

Furthermore, this truly amazes me:

And the House postponed a showdown vote on opening 8 million more acres in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling, worried about achieving the two-thirds supermajority needed to pass the measure under special rules.

But those same rules did not hold House GOP leaders back from setting a vote Wednesday on a bill to limit fetal pain during late-term abortions, a measure GOP leaders shied away from offering before the November midterm elections and which stands no chance of passing the Senate even under GOP control.

Basically, they care more about oil and their own political careers than protecting the lives of unborn children. They didn’t want to bring this up before the election because they were trying to cater to the “moderate” crowd. Well, look where it got them - Dems took control over the entire Congress.

I have a lot of questions about the way this vote was handled. First, why was it rushed along when everyone knew it couldn’t get a supermajority? Clearly, they did not speed the vote up in hopes of winning - rather, they just wanted to get it over with. If the Republican Congress had truly been concerned about the lives of unborn child pain, I feel like they would have waited until the next session when they could get more publicity and put more pressure on the Democrats.

Secondly, and more importantly in my mind: Where was Cubin? Why wasn’t she there? It’s more important to me because I voted for her. Wyoming put her in office (just barely beating her opponent) with the belief that she would represent us in Washington. Call me crazy, but I feel like most Wyomingites would not be in favor of torturing unborn children.

[I’m going to try to update this more over the next couple of days, since I’m finally 3/4 done with finals and have time to research!]