REPUBLICANS FAIL TO VALUE REPUBLICAN VALUES. This is kind of funny, until you realize that it�s more convenient, politically speaking, for the GOP to have their values agenda keep failing, so that they can keep running on it and against Democrats who allegedly oppose it:

House Republicans failed Wednesday to advance a bill protecting the words ”under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Only a day earlier, the GOP had placed the measure on its ”American Values Agenda” in hopes of bolster the party’s prospects in the fall election.

But Republicans could not muster a simple majority on the issue in a committee where they outnumber Democrats by six….

Ten of the committee’s 23 Republicans did not show up for the vote.

The committee will try again tomorrow.

–Garance Franke-Ruta

Garance Franke-Ruta is a former senior editor at the Prospect. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She was a 2006 recipient of a fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University.