The New York times has out an article in which they discuss how many House candidates recruited by Rahm Emmanuel, are quite conservative. They're pro-gun and anti-abortion, and don't consider themselves progressives or liberals.

There are two arguments about this - one is that there are substantial areas of agreement. The war in Iraq say, or oversight, or perhaps like Bob Casey (Democratic Senate candidate in PA) they're pro-union, but anti-abortion. And this school of thought figures, "hey, we have areas we agree on, we can work with these people."

But there's another argument which runs as follows. It's not what you're "for" or "against" it's what matters to you most. So, for example, if a Scalito clone comes up - for signing statements, pro-torture, thinks unions should lose their organizing rights - but strongly anti abortion - Bob Casey will vote for them, because to Casey the pro-life part of that equation outweighs anything else.

Now I don't know enough about specific House candidates to say how this class is going to work out, and my take is that Rahm is less concerned with ideology than with making sure as much of the incoming class owes him, but I do know this - a lot of the people Rahm recruited for these states are going to give liberals and progressives a lot of hearburn in the years to come. Stock up on antacid now, before the run.