Republicans going after each other
The Republicans are at it again.
The only thing Republicans seem good at these days is losing badly in presidential elections, failing miserably during “fiscal cliff” debates and fighting among themselves. In fact, one day after the 113th Congress was sworn in, 67 Republicans put the country on notice. They’re not going to rest until the entire Republican Party disintegrates.
The stage was set shortly after House Republicans grudgingly joined Democrats in passing Obama’s plan to avoid the fiscal cliff.
Within minutes after the vote, and without any warning, Northeastern Republicans appeared at microphones to express their apprehension — no — disappointment — strike that — unsullied indignation at House Speaker John Boehner.
You would have thought Boehner was a Democrat. And for that night, he may have hoped he was one.
Boehner called off a vote that would have sent billions of dollars in federal disaster relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.
Peter King of New York, one of the more vocal Republicans in the House, had been assured that a disaster relief bill would be voted on after the fiscal cliff bill had been laid to rest. He was wrong. “The speaker walked off the floor, told an aide to the majority leader that the Congress was finished, that there were no votes,” King claimed.
And he went even further. “What they did last night to put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans was an absolute disgrace,” he bristled.
Let me say, and without any equivocation, that I’d be the LAST person to want to call for Republicans to stop their cat fighting. I just pop a batch of Orville Redenbacher (Movie Theatre Butter), pull up an easy chair and chortle with each new verbal attack launched in the direction of John Boehner.
But Wednesday, perhaps the nation’s most popular Republican — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — was lobbing verbal grenades at one of the least popular — Speaker Boehner.
“It’s absolutely disgraceful,” Christie told reporters in Trenton. But he was just getting revved up. “There’s only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent victims — the House majority and their speaker, John Boehner,” Christie said.
Christie was simply putting aside party politics and fighting for the flood-ravaged citizens of his state. Hardly anybody could argue with that.
Boehner did put a smaller version ($9.7 billion instead of the $60 billion that had been requested) of the disaster relief bill up for a vote before the new Congress. That’s when it became clear that the new crop of Republicans are no better than the old crop.
The $9.7 billion package passed by a vote of 354 to 67. Every Democrat voted for the bill. While most Republicans voted for it too, 67 Republicans voted against it. That was politics at its worst.
One of those Republicans who didn’t see fit to help the residents of New York and New Jersey has, himself, gone to the floor of the U.S. House to plead for disaster relief money for his state. Rep. Steven Palazzo (GOP-Miss.) was still asking for money under the federal Flood Insurance Program last year — seven years after his state was hit by Hurricane Katrina. He made his impassioned request then, but when the same kind of money was being voted on for the victims of Hurricane Sandy, Palazzo voted no.
Palazzo’s hypocrisy, while spectacular, still didn’t match the outright political silliness engaged in by one Paul Ryan. You remember Rep. Ryan (GOP-Wisconsin), don’t you? He and what’s-his-name just ran for president and vice president.
Ryan is back in the U.S. House, and he was one of the 67 Republicans who voted against the disaster relief bill. He claims the legislation “refuses to distinguish — or even prioritize — disaster relief over pork-barrel spending.”
If there was a lot of “pork-barrel spending” in that bill, Ryan may have had a point. The entire text of it was only 180 words long. And there wasn’t a single piece of pork-barrel spending added to it.
Ryan is still losing, long after the election.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.