Repuglican Stoopidity

When it rains it pours. Many are having great fun with Bachmann's trainwreck today, including MSM types like Karen Tumulty who quipped: In today's installment, Michele Bachmann saves us from a sneaky Chinese and Russian plot to achieve world domination through a global currency, but reveals that she was not at school the day they studied this in sixth grade .

• John Cole

  This video is just priceless. Rep. Michelle Bachman, easily one of the most embarrassing persons in Congress and also one of the wingnuttiest, spent her five minutes asking inane questions about the Constitutionality of Geithner’s actions.

  After about the third time she asked, I would have asked her where in the Constitution it says the desk he is sitting at should be wood. And then asked her to tell me where in the Constitution it says he has to wear clothes.

  There are a whole host of things not specifically listed in the Constitution- a wide wide world of government activities- but that doesn’t mean that engaging in those activities is “unconstitutional.” Geithner’s actions do not derive their authority directly from something written into the Constitution several hundred years ago, but from the authority that Congress granted him when they passed the respective bills. In fact, the very reason we have things called “Constitutional Scholars” is because everything isn’t spelled out verbatim in the Constitution.

• Steve Benen:

  Watching Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.) speak has a certain car-wreck quality. It's painful and disturbing, but it's just so difficult to look away.

  Take Bachman's questioning today of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Research Chairman Ben Bernanke. ... ... ...
  

  And finally, Bachmann insisted that China, Russia, and Kazakhstan (she really doesn't know how to pronounce Kazakhstan) are moving towards a "global currency." She wanted to hear Geithner and Bernanke "categorically" rule out the United States giving up on the U.S. dollar. Both did, though Bernanke's body language suggested he couldn't believe how silly the question was.

  Granted, this isn't exactly new, and Bachmann's difficulties are well documented. But that doesn't make today's performance any less entertaining.

Benen on TOO MANY POLICIES?....

For a while, one of the principal criticisms from President Obama's detractors was that he's trying to take on too many policy challenges at once. The criticism never really stuck, and the White House did a reasonably good job of explaining why the president sees the various issues as interconnected.

The argument has, apparently, evolved into a new-but-related criticism.

The chief spokesperson for GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell just said in an interview that leading Republicans are going to ratchet up their criticism of the Obama administration for releasing too many big plans on the economy -- with too little sense of how they mesh with or impact each other.

The comments from McConnell spokesperson Don Stewart amount to a preview of what we'll likely be hearing from Senate Republicans and other Republican leaders in the days ahead.

"We can't help but notice the numerous and sundry plans that seem to come out at a rate of one a week without any clear picture of how they interact and whether they interact well or not," Stewart told me. "That's a very real concern among Senate Republicans."

Frankly, the talk-and-chew-gum argument made more sense.

In fact, putting aside the merit of the Obama administration's agenda, and overlooking the fact that the president is acting on the same agenda he offered during the campaign, I've long thought the White House has gone out of its way to emphasize how these seemingly disparate issues directly relate to each other. Obama has a governing vision, and all of the pieces fit together to shape the larger picture, especially on the three main domestic policy areas (health care, energy, and education). McConnell's new argument seems to have it backwards.

What's more, this new criticism was like setting a ball on a tee for the DNC:

Democratic National Committee spokesman Hari Sevugan ... emails over a response amplifying the "party of no ideas" attack that Dems have been waging on the GOP:

"I guess when you have no new ideas, anything more than zero must seem overwhelming. But, if the Republican party thinks that attacking new ideas is a winning answer, they're more out of touch than we all thought."

I suspect McConnell and GOP leaders on the Hill are probably just experimenting with messages. They try one rhetorical tack, and when it fails to resonate, they move on to the next. When it fails, they try another. With that in mind, my hunch is the "too many policies" line won't last long.

Cole: Always Loud, Always Wrong

Remember last week when Chip Reid and Rick Klein were getting the vapors about Gibbs ripping into Cheney and Limbaugh at the daily presser? And then remember how we were told it was a terrible gaffe and all that? About that:

Congressional Republicans are telling Dick Cheney to go back to his undisclosed location and leave them alone to rebuild the Republican Party without his input.

Displeased with the former vice-president’s recent media appearances, Republican lawmakers say he’s hurting GOP efforts to reinvent itself after back-to-back electoral drubbings.

The veep, who showed a penchant for secrecy during eight years in the White House,has popped up in media interviews to defend the Bush-Cheney record while suggesting that the country is not as safe under President Obama.

The story then goes on to list a number of Republicans who are basically telling the former Vice President to shut up and Cheney himself. And the really awesome part of all this? Unlike Rush Limbaugh, Cheney won’t be getting any apologies from the congressmen.

And this guy is supposed to be one of the saner ones. Benen WHAT IS CHUCK GRASSLEY TALKING ABOUT?....

While the political world has come to expect a certain amount of transparent, mind-numbing nonsense from House Republicans, it's worth remembering that Senate Republicans are often just as ridiculous.

Take Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), for example. A five-term senator from a blue-ish state, Grassley is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. He's also purportedly the leading Republican in the chamber working with the majority on health care reform.

And when it comes to the basics of the economic crisis, Grassley has now embraced neo-Hooverism with both arms.

The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee on Monday said an across-the-board freeze on federal spending is needed to reel in President Obama's massive budget plan, signaling a more active Republican stance in fighting the president's agenda.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, also said the president is pursuing a "socialist" form of government that will stifle the free market.

Mr. Grassley told editors and reporters at The Washington Times that a spending freeze is necessary to get the federal deficit under control and to show voters that the government is capable of living within its means in hard times.

"What you get when you have an across-the-board freeze is everybody is seen as contributing something," Grassley told the conservative paper, adding that a three-year freeze can have a "very dramatic" effect.

That's true, in a Great Depression kind of way.

If I thought Grassley was just spouting nonsense to make the base happy, I could laugh this off as mere partisan stupidity. But I get the sense the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee actually believes this. He seriously wants a spending freeze -- for three years -- in the midst of a deep and serious recession.

Even David Brooks recently said, "A lot of Republicans up in Capitol Hill right now are calling for a spending freeze in a middle of a recession/depression. That is insane." Responding to the last GOP officials to call for a spending freeze, Paul Krugman added, "I'm shocked by the total intellectual collapse of the Republican Party in the face of this economic crisis.... I'd really like to see some genuine bipartisanship in America. But that can't happen until we start having at least somewhat sane partisans."

And why is this such a spectacularly foolish idea? As Pat Garofalo recently explained: "The economic stimulus package's main purpose is to close the GDP gap and jumpstart the economy by spurring spending by households, government and the private sector. A spending freeze would act as an 'anti-stimulus,' cutting spending precisely when it's too low and the economy is moving too slowly."

It all comes back to what I call the Republicans' "pre-recession mindset." In the midst of a crisis, too many GOP policymakers, including Grassley, are yet to realize that things have changed.

Grassley's bizarre beliefs reinforce a point from a couple of weeks ago: it's time to leave the minority party out of the policy discussion until they're ready to sit at the big kids' table. The party, at this point, just aren't trying anymore. They deserve a lot of things -- ridicule, scorn, derision -- but at a place at the policy negotiating table isn't one of them.