This morning's news is ripe with the sort of Republican statements/proclamations that would make most rational people blush. Let's take a look at a few:
1. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, instrumental in killing the Obama jobs bill, claimed on CNN's "State of the Nation" that it was not the federal government's role to keep emergency responders and teachers from being fired: "“I certainly do approve of firefighters and police. The question is whether the federal government ought to be raising taxes on 300,000 small businesses in order to send money down to bail out states for whom firefighters and police work. They are local and state employees.” (Talking Points Memo) This seems logical, right? Unless, of course, you consider that it is mostly Republican-led State Houses that also refuse to do anything about the prospects of increased unemployment and it is the federal government that can enact the will of 75% of the public and actually increase taxes. Yet this is probably the most reasonable thing said yesterday ...
2. Michelle Bachmann admitted on Fox News that Gaddafi would probably still be in power if she were President (as she critiqued Obama for assisting the effort to unseat him). The rather long quote sums up the insanity that addles her confused brain: "Well, he may be," Bachmann agreed. "I stand by that decision. I think it is wrong for the United States to go in to Libya. Barack Obama said we were going in to Libya for humanitarian purposes. It wasn't humanitarian purposes. It was regime change. And what's the result? We don't know who the next leaders will be. It could be a radical element. It could be the Muslim Brotherhood. It could be elements affiliated with al Qaeda. We don't know yet who that regime will be, but worse, we've seen the MANPADS go missing and the shoulder-fired rockets that are very dangerous, that could fit into a trunk of a car. And there are some reports out there that they may have even gone as far as Gaza and of course, that could be used to bring down a commercial airliner. This is a very bad decision, and it's created more instability in that region, not less." (Crooks & Liars (with video link)). I hate to exaggerate a point, but couldn't we have said the same of Hussein, or I don't know, Hitler?
3. On a related topic, not one but two conservatives claim that Obama is to blame for failure in Iraq. Obama, of course, is also to blame for the financial crisis and there is talk that he might be implicated in the JFK assassination as well. More to follow. Senator Lindsay Graham (TPM) claimed that Obama had lost the war in Iraq, where we need more troops to secure victory, and was too slow in acting in Libya and Afghanistan. I assume he will soon argue that he should have gotten bin Laden faster as well. More directly to the point, Presidential Candidate and confirmed asshole Rick Santorum claimed Obama had "lost the war." (Crooks & Liars). I have always read that history is written by the winner, but it's hard not to claim history is written by losers in America -- oops, I mean "the losers."
4. On that topic, let's get to the exciting new book Suicide of a Superpower from consummate hater Pat Buchanan, a guy that just won't go away. Among his many claims, he had this to say on the fall of White America, "Will this Mexican nation within a nation advance the goals of the Constitution—to “insure domestic tranquility” and “make us a more perfect union”? Or has our passivity in the face of this invasion imperiled our union?" And this on "reverse racism": "Half a century after Martin Luther King envisioned a day when his children would be judged ‘not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character,’ journalists of color are demanding the hiring and promotion of journalists based on the color of their skin. Jim Crow is back. Only the color of the beneficiaries and the color of the victims have been reversed." And though one could go on endlessly, as he does, one final quote should show his startling knowledge of American jurisprudence: "Not until the 1960s did courts begin to use the Fourteenth Amendment to impose a concept of equality that the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, The Federalist Papers, and the Gettysburg Address never believed in. Before the 1960s, equality meant every citizen enjoyed the same constitutional rights and the equal protection of existing laws. Nothing in the Constitution or federal law mandated social, racial, or gender equality." (TPM).
5. And finally, our day wouldn't be complete without former frontrunner Republican candidate Rick Perry chiming in. He is now trying to salvage his candidacy by turning to the birthers, who can keep a conspiracy theory without wings going longer than Agent Mulder. Read this exchange that could very well have been an Abbott and Costello bit, if not for the final statement: TPM.
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