Repuglicans on Parade 3-13-09

The first item isn't on Repuglicans, but so what?
Gibbs on Stewart/Kramer. Video by JedL


Aravosis: Minority of GOP voters have favorable view of Republican congressional leaders

Maybe they'd be happier with Senator Limbaugh:

Some striking numbers buried in a new Rasmussen Poll show that GOP Congressional leaders are viewed favorably only by a minority.

A minority of Republican voters, that is.

Just 35% of GOP voters have a favorable rating of GOP House leader John Boehner. Only 40% of Republicans view Senate leader Mitch McConnell favorably.

What’s more, these findings are the work of Rasmussen, who critics have accused of tilting their polling to the right.

Most interesting, a majority of Dems view Pelosi and Reid positively.

I wonder why no one likes repuglicans. digby says it's about Principles

I'm pretty sure everyone gets this, but in case you don't, the reason that Governors Rick Perry and Mark Sanford are "refusing" to take the stimulus money is because they are running for president. They are making the bet that the economy will either be very bad, in which case they can run against Obama's socialistic policies which ruined the country --- or that the economy will be off the table as an issue and it won't make any difference. (I would guess they are thinking the first is the most likely.)And since their state legislatures will override their "principled" opposition, they know that they won't actually be responsible for denying people unemployment benefits in the worst recession since the great depression. That's what passes for integrity among Republicans.

Of course, they aren't exactly the first to play this sort of game, are they? The Democrats were faced with a similar dilemma in 2002. The presidential hopeful club had to decide whether to support the Iraq war or risk being called unpatriotic and a "captive of the anti-war left" if they didn't. They all voted for it and none of them made it to the White House. Their calculation was wrong on every level, not the least of which is that it was a cynical, political move that cost many lives. That's something they'll have to live with.

It was obvious at the time that the principled vote was also the smart vote: there was no way any Democrat would win in 2004 if the war was going well --- and if it wasn't, having voted for it was not exactly going to be a selling point. That turned out to be true in both 2004 and 2008. The guy who won was the guy who spoke out against the war at the time. The principled move was also the smart move.

The principled position in this case is for the conservatives to admit that this crisis requires government intervention, but that's obviously not on the menu. But these Republican Governors are being saved from such a dilemma by their legislatures, which don't have the luxury at the moment of taking a cynical political position that will result in actual harm to their constituents. If the economy improves by the next presidential election, it's going to be Morning in America redux and they won't have a chance anyway. They have to bet on failure and this is the only way they can really demonstrate in 2012 that they wouldn't have made the "mistakes" Obama is making is by taking an insane position now and pretending that would have made the difference. I don't know if it will work, even if things are still bad in 2012. But it's probably the only thing they've got since their ideology is so bankrupt they literally can't run on anything real.

Think Progress: McCain Objects To Interior Nominee Because He Once Compared Ronald Reagan To George W. Bush

During a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) threatened to oppose President Obama’s pick deputy secretary of Interior, David Hayes, over comments that Hayes had made about former President Ronald Reagan in a 2006 report for the Progressive Policy Institute. “I will be considering seriously whether I can support your nomination or not,” said McCain.

At the hearing, McCain read aloud from Hayes’ article:

“The conservative political agenda in the West is grounded in hoary stereotypes about the region and its people” and that “out of this conservative world view emerges the stereotypical Western man (and it is unquestionably a ‘he’)—a rugged, gun-toting individualist who fiercely guards every man’s right to drill, mine, log, or do whatever he damn well pleases on the land” and that “Like Ronald Reagan before him, President Bush has embraced the Western stereotype to the point of adopting some of its affectations—the boots, brush-clearing, and get-the-government-off-our-backs bravado.”

Though McCain did not defend Bush, he said that Hayes’ reference to Reagan was “highly offensive.” “You had to throw Reagan in there?” asked McCain after Hayes said he regretted the “overly florid” prose of the article.

McCain has long revered Reagan, even callling himself a “a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution.” But Will Bunch, who recently wrote a book debunking myths about Reagan, notes that “Reagan and much more so Bush really were urban cowboys with a strange obsession for brush clearing that seemed to evaporate the same hour their presidencies expired.” Bunch calls McCain’s threat against Hayes’ nomination both “chilling” and “anti-speech.”

...

• Steve Benen:

  I've seen some compelling commentary of late about reconsidering the Senate's "advice and consent" powers, because the confirmation process for deputies and assistant deputies has become rather ridiculous. John McCain seems to be helping this argument along nicely, doesn't he?

  In this case, a long-time Senate veteran is raising questions about a president's nominee to be deputy secretary of Interior because, three years ago, the nominee said something kinda sorta intemperate about Ronald Reagan.

  Even McCain must realize how terribly silly this is.

• Matthew Yglesias: Brian Beutler reminds us that despite John McCain hissy fit, it’s quite true that Ronald Reagan’s environmental record was bad.

Yglesias: WINEP Says F-22 Deployment Could Facilitate War With Iran

It’s like the sum of all wingnuts:

A report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said that if talks fail to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear program, forward deployment of the F-22 could neutralize the threat. “Only the F-22 can survive in airspace defended by increasingly capable surface-to-air missiles,” said retired Lt. Gen. Mike Dunn, Air Force Association president. […] “Forward deployment of the F-22 could restore the credibility of the military option by indicating that it remains alive,” the report said.

I keep waiting for someone to make the case that war with Iran would be stimulative.

Think Progress: Rep. Bachmann Claims To Have Taken No-Pork Pledge, But Actually Requested $3 Million In Earmarks In 2008

On Fox Business yesterday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) joined the long parade of members of Congress who rail against earmarks while requesting their own. But Bachmann took her hypocrisy a step further, claiming that she has signed an anti-pork pledge:

CLAMAN: How about a no-pork bill? Will that ever be a reality?

BACHMANN: I think it is possible. I took a pledge in my own district. I have not taken earmarks in the last three years that I have been in Congress because the system is so corrupt. It’s possible to make that pledge.

In fact, according to Legistorm, Bachmann has requested 7 earmarks in Fiscal Year 2008 costing tax payers a total of $3,767,600. Some examples:

- $94,000 for Sheriffs Youth Program of MN
- $335,000 for Equipment Acquisition for Northland Medical Center
- $803,000 for Replacement Small Buses, St. Cloud Metro Bus

As MSNBC’s David Shuster noted, Bachmann indeed signed the Club for Growth’s ‘No Earmark’ pledge back in 2008. While she clearly broke this pledge, Bachmann’s name is curiously absent from the list of lawmakers making the same pledge for 2009.

• As Steve Benen says, While hypocrisy among Republican lawmakers on earmarks is amusing, it's especially funny when Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) does it.

Steve Benen: And finally, remember Sen. David Vitter's (R-La.) airport tantrum? Apparently, the incident is now the subject of a Transportation Security Administration preliminary investigation. I, for one, can't wait for the security-camera footage to go public.

Francification?!? March 12: GOP in Exile: Rachel Maddow explains why Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, is now firmly against President Obama's budget.

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South Carolina may use stimulus after all March 12: Rachel Maddow explains why South Carolina may actually be using the stimulus money for stimulus purposes after all.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy