My guess is that the reporting got garbled. I bet Mitchell cast his vote and the board above the House floor reflected his no vote. My guess is that he may have still held his ID card in his hand…perhaps signaling that he could be flipped, but then again, it could mean nothing, that he was simply holding his card.

House rules are so tremendously tilted in favor of the majority that a failed vote is extremely rare.

The last time I recall a bill so handily going to defeat was the original 1994 Crime Bill. The then-Democrat leadership of Tom Foley and Dick Gephardt was caught flat-footed and embarassed by the loss.

Rule #1 for House leadership: NEVER bring a vote to the floor when you don’t have the votes. These guys weren’t even close. That’s just incompetent.

Of course, this is all academic. I don’t care if you’re GOP or a Dem; if the phones are ringing off the hook and constituents are telling you they don’t like the bill, you need to pay attention. Any lawmaker who ignores public outcries like that will need to find work in the private sector.

By the way, did some of you here get instruction to “pack up” the anti-immigration debate? Not a word of it at the GOP convention, rarely a word on the conservative blogs.

Getting close to election time…you don’t mind offending Hispanic voters in off years but as the election gets closer its…crickets that I hear.

On Giffords, nice try…you don’t have shred of anything on her about her vote, wavering, or anything like it.

It is going to be interesting how this all falls out. The fallout so far has been disappointment in the 95 Dems that voted against it…but massive anger against the House republicans who overwhelmingly vote against it and pulled it apart. As the market dropped 777 points, businesses were freaked, and retirees are losing their income, you can bet there will be fallout…more of it.

This may be the final nail in the coffin of business supporting the GOP.

Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality. If this economy slides, they will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century. With this vote, they’ve taken responsibility for this economy, and they will be held accountable. The short-term blows will fall on John McCain, the long-term stress on the existence of the G.O.P. as we know it.

– David Brooks

I certainly won’t claim to know why the rest voted the way they did, but at least we can be thankful they didn’t vote to give a huge handout to Wall Street.