The Republicans Found Their Backbone!
It's time to celebrate! For all of us Republicans we have been waiting and waiting for our Representatives in Congress to work for us. Today we have finally seen what can be done when the right thing happens.
To begin with - the House of Representatives was adjourned by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) for the summer and refused to let Congress vote on legislation "to increase American-made energy and lower gas prices". House Republicans continued to give their speeches to try and find a way to make things easier for Americans to afford their gasoline going into their tanks. Speaker Pelosi went so far as to turn off the lights, cameras and microphones in the House.
Members participating in the spontaneous uprising included Reps. Roy Blunt, John Boehner, Michael Burgess, John Campbell, Eric Cantor, Shelly Moore Capito, John Carter, Mike Conaway, John Culberson, Charlie Dent, Jeff Fortenberry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Pete Hoekstra, Duncan Hunter, Thaddeus McCotter, Mike Pence, Tom Price, Ted Poe, Adam Putnam, Bill Sali, John Shadegg, John Shimkus, Tim Walberg, and Lynn Westmoreland.
The Republicans decided to stay put to deal with the energy crisis after they'd given Pelosi a letter asking Pelosi to keep the House in session to deal with the problem. The letter noted:
“With American families and small businesses facing record high gasoline prices, Congress has adjourned to leave Washington for a five-week break. The message this sends to the American people is bad enough; its ramifications, however, are far worse. You have the power to call Congress back into session at any moment to deal with issues of urgent national importance…”
“Congress should not take the next five weeks off while the American people suffer at the pump. We respectfully request that you schedule a vote on the comprehensive American Energy Act during an emergency legislative session this month."
Next is the newest advertisement put out by the McCain campaign. It's brilliant. It finally attacks Barack Obama in his own words as the new "messiah"- the one who has been sent to "save" the country. Let's see how long it takes the Democrats to flip out.
I'm finally excited about the Republican Party again. I've been waiting so long to see the Party finally find their backbone. It may or may not be a one-time event, but I'm excited. Here we go!
Comments
The Republican Party, which has defined modern-day
> negative politics,
> was back at it again, bashing Barack Obama and the news
> media in an ugly
> display that rivaled the old days of Nixon-Agnew - or
> George W. Bush's last
> convention where GOP operatives passed out "Purple
> Heart Band-Aids" to mock
> John Kerry's war wounds.
>
> After a slow start because of Hurricane Gustav, the
> convention in St.
> Paul, Minnesota, has turned into an anti-Obama hate-fest
> with a nearly
> all-white gathering laughing at and mocking the
> nation's first
> African-American presidential nominee of a major party.
>
> However, beyond the pulsating contempt visible on the
> faces of the GOP
> delegates, many of the nasty attacks on Obama - as well as
> the effusive
> praise for the Republican ticket - were blatantly false, as
> if testing the
> depths of American gullibility and bigotry.
>
> In speech after speech, Republicans didn't so much
> as tell the Big Lie
> as they deployed Wholesale Lies.
>
> The Associated Press, which mostly had been recycling
> the Republican
> spin about the supposedly "maverick" ticket of
> John McCain and Sarah Palin,
> was so struck by the litany of distortions that the AP
> produced a special
> fact-checking article describing how Republicans had
> "stretched the truth."
>
> For instance, Palin said about Obama, "it's
> easy to forget that this is
> a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major
> law or reform -
> not even in the state senate."
>
> However, as the AP noted, Obama "worked with
> Republicans to pass
> legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal
> shipments of weapons
> of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional
> weapons stockpiles. The
> legislation became law last year."
>
> Plus, the AP reported, "In Illinois, he was the
> leader on two big,
> contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling
> by police and
> requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death
> penalty cases. He
> also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform
> legislation."
>
> The AP's fact-checking article noted, too, that
> former Arkansas Gov.
> Mike Huckabee's slap at Democratic vice presidential
> nominee Joe Biden -
> that Palin "got more votes running for mayor of
> Wasilla, Alaska, than Joe
> Biden got running for president of the United States"
> - was a "whopper."
>
> The AP wrote that "Palin got 616 votes in the 1996
> mayor's election, and
> got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525.
> Biden dropped
> out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got
> 76,165 votes in 23
> states and the District of Columbia where he was on the
> ballot during the
> 2008 presidential primaries."
>
> Parallel Reality
>
> The Republican National Convention also acted as if the
> Republicans had
> not controlled the White House for the past eight years and
> the Congress for
> most of that time.
>
> "We need change, all right," declared former
> Massachusetts Gov. Mitt
> Romney, "change from a liberal Washington to a
> conservative Washington! We
> have a prescription for every American who wants change in
> Washington -
> throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John
> McCain and Sarah
> Palin."
>
> Beyond this parallel universe of who runs Washington,
> there was fanciful
> puffery about the GOP "reformer" ticket - dubbed
> "maverick squared" - that
> doesn't square with reality at all.
>
> For instance, the AP cited Palin's claim that
> "I have protected the
> taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed
> reform to end the
> abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress
> 'thanks but no
> thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."
>
> The reality, of course, was much different.
>
> As the AP noted. Palin, as mayor of the tiny town of
> Wasilla, hired a
> lobbyist and made annual treks to Washington seeking
> earmarked spending that
> totaled $27 million, and then as Alaska's governor for
> less than two years,
> she sought nearly $750 million in special federal spending,
> "by far the
> largest per-capita request in the nation."
>
> And as for that $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to
> an island with 50
> residents, the truth is that Palin enthusiastically
> supported the project
> before she reluctantly opposed it, rejecting the
> "Bridge to Nowhere" only
> after it had become politically indefensible.
>
> The Los Angeles Times discovered that Sen. McCain had
> specifically cited
> several of Palin's earmarks on his annual list of
> wasteful pork-barrel
> spending.
>
> In 2001, for instance, McCain's list included a
> $500,000 earmark for a
> public transportation project in Wasilla, and in 2002, he
> criticized $1
> million targeted for an emergency communications center
> that Palin sought
> but local law enforcement said was redundant and a source
> of confusion.
>
> Remaking Palin
>
> Now, however, Palin has been transformed into a
> maverick reformer.
> McCain's campaign even cites her experience as an
> abuser of the earmark
> process as part of the reason she supposedly understands
> why it must be
> scrapped.
>
> McCain spokesman Taylor Griffin said Palin's
> successes in getting
> earmarked funds "was one of the formative experiences
> that led her toward
> the reform-oriented stance that she has taken as her career
> has progressed."
>
> Nevertheless, Palin wrote in a newspaper column just
> this year that "the
> federal budget, in its various manifestations, is
> incredibly important to
> us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this
> relationship." [For
> more details, see Los Angeles Times, Sept. 3, 2008]
>
> Beyond the GOP's reality-challenged speeches, there
> was the startling
> image of a nearly all-white convention - where only 36 of
> the 2,380
> delegates were black, the smallest number in at least 40
> years - rollicking
> in ridicule and bristling with animosity toward Obama, an
> African-American.
>
> With their loud chants of "drill, baby,
> drill" regarding energy policy
> and boisterous shouts of "USA, USA" about
> "victory" in Iraq, there was a
> sense that St. Paul was hosting a convention of American
> Falangists, rather
> than that of a modern national party.
>
> The whiff of authoritarianism extended to outside where
> demonstrators
> and journalists were swept off the streets in
> indiscriminate arrests.
>
> What's less clear about the GOP convention is
> whether the Republicans
> are on to something, that perhaps the United States has
> crossed over into a
> post-rational society that cares little about facts and
> reality or serious
> policy ideas and respectful debate, but rather is a nation
> moved by anger
> and ridicule, fear and nationalism.
>
> --------
>
> Robert Parry
Posted by: anony | September 11, 2008 2:38 PM