When Republican Ahn "Joseph" Cao won the run-off election in LA-02 to replace Democratic incumbent, though ethically challenged, William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson, every political pundit pegged Cao as a one-termer.  After all, the district was heavily Democratic, voting for Barack Obama by nearly 3-1, and Jefferson only lost after a concerted effort by local Democrats to remove him from office.

Despite the national GOP's immediate embrace of the surprise winner, including saying "the future is Cao,"  Cao knew he had to walk a fine tightrope.  In his first high-profile votes, for Barack Obama's budget and stimulus package, Cao initially signaled that he was open to supporting the President.  That's until some strong arm-twisting by top-level Republicans got him to stick with the rest of his fellow GOP'ers, against the wishes of his constituencies.

Since then, Cao has continually tried to create some distance between him and his party, even going as far as calling himself a "closet Democrat."  In fact, he has only voted with his fellow Republicans 63% of the time:

Because of his district’s strongly Democratic-leaning demographics, Cao is the most vulnerable House member in either party. He sided with Democrats and against Republicans in voting to expand children’s health insurance programs and federal hate crimes laws (HR 1913). He was one of five Republicans who voted last month for a war supplemental spending law (PL 111-32) advocated by Obama.

But the question is, is this a little too late?  Perhaps if Cao had show some backbone and bucked his party earlier, he might not be scrambling at this point.