The House of Representatives Called "Ultraconservative"

Bob Kuttner reports:

The ultraconservative House of Representatives voted, 390 to 33, to extend the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which otherwise would expire next spring. Even Bush signaled support. House Republican leaders had tried to water down the act by weakening federal protections in states and counties with long histories of denying minorities the vote. A key amendment, proposing to gut the right of voters to receive bilingual materials, lost, 238 to 185.

This victory for civil rights had less to do with a sudden Republican outbreak of conscience than with politics in the best sense -- Republican fear of voter retribution by an increasingly pluralist electorate. If Bush's despotic designs are thwarted, it will not be courtesy of vanishingly rare profiles in courage by Republican legislators or by bravely independent courts, but because the voters finally grasp the stakes.

One wonders how much more money the Republican Congress would have to spend for Bob Kuttner to not use the phrase "ultraconservative" in describing Congress.Have you ever seen the New York Times call someone an "ultraliberal"?