Republican lawmakers say the darndest things

December 11, 2006

Like Salon’s Tim Grieve, I noticed that one can peruse the last day or so of Think Progress posts and discover some fascinating insights into the minds of Republican lawmakers.

For example, there’s Sen. Sam Brownback’s (R-Kan.) solution for the crisis in Iraq.

One of the key recommendations of the Iraq Study Group was direct, unconditional engagement with Iran and Syria. It was quickly rejected by the Bush administration.

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Sam Brownback — one of the most conservative members of the Senate — embraced the recommendation, but with an unusual twist. Brownback said that the administration should “park” Vice President Cheney in the region, leading the diplomatic effort.

Yes, because Cheney has demonstrated real diplomatic abilities before. For that matter, since Cheney believes we should take sides in Iraq’s civil war, he’s probably the ideal candidate to head up a regional discussion, right?

Then we have outgoing Sen. Rick Santorum’s (R-Pa.) thoughts on changes in Iran.

This morning on MSNBC, outgoing Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) unveiled his plan to “confront” Iran. Santorum said that the United States should have supported a bus driver strike that occurred a few weeks ago. According to Santorum, “We should have quietly gone in there and given them a whole boat-load of money so they could sustain the strike and continue to cause unrest within Iran to try to topple the government.”

It’s exactly this kind of insightful wisdom that helped Santorum lose by 18 points last month.

Then there’s Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) on U.S. policy towards Cuba.

In a new documentary, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) — who was “recently tapped to become the top Republican on the House International Relations Committee” — talks casually on video “about how proud she is to represent Cuban ‘freedom fighters’ living in exile in Miami and on the island.” She then says, “I welcome the opportunity of having anyone assassinate Fidel Castro and any leader who is oppressing the people.”

Ros-Lehtinen later said her comments were taken out of context, but watching the video, it sure doesn’t seem like it.

And, finally, there’s Sen. Jim Inhofe’s (R-Okla.) latest nonsense on climate change.

The IPCC … “lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001.” The new estimate was “a refinement due to better data on how climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming.”

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), outgoing chairman of the Environment & Public Works Committee, said the report is evidence that global warming was all hype:

We are all skeptics now. It appears that the UN is now acknowledging what an increasing number of scientists who study the climate have come to realize: Predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming are simply unsustainable.

Inhofe’s core claim is that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and humans are not responsible for climate change. The new IPCC report does not support Inhofe’s position, it undermines it.

It’s ironic that Inhofe is now citing the IPCC as an authority. In speech on the Senate floor in 2003, Inhofe claimed that “the IPCC process resembled a Soviet-style trial, in which the facts are predetermined, and ideological purity trumps technical and scientific rigor.”

Remember, the GOP leadership believes the key to regaining political power is demonstrating that the Republican Party is the “party of ideas.” It’s off to a great post-election start, isn’t it?

“We should have quietly gone in there and given [the striking bus drivers] a whole boat-load of money so they could sustain the strike and continue to cause unrest within Iran to try to topple the government.” – Ricky “Man on Dog, vote against me and my daughter will cry” Santorum

Yep, and given the Persians in Iran an excuse to arrest the lot of them as foreign supported terrorists and traitors.

  • the Republican Party is the “party of ideas.”

    Ideas such as

    * the Earth is flat and you can fall of the edge if you sail far enough
    * the Sun goes around the Earth (and Joshua made it stop for the battle of Jericho)
    * Earth is 6,000 years old (Gen.& Mat. genealogies), so evolution is impossible
    * according to 1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2, PI = 3.0
    * only 144,000 will be among the Saved when the Rapture arrives
    * pork rind tastes good
    * Shruby is the decider

  • * only 144,000 will be among the Saved when the Rapture arrives

    Which is only about 2000 years late.

  • …the administration should “park” Vice President Cheney in the region, leading the diplomatic effort.

    Oops, now we know where the “Undisclosed location” is. Under the King of Saudi Arabia’s bed.

    Really? Park him? Is the idea that Dick “Dick” Cheney’s big fat arse would form an impassable blockade between the Syrian/Iraqi borders to stop the suspected flow of arms? Or perhaps Cheney roam the streets of Baghdad snarling “Go fuck yourself,” at the various warring factions until they flee. Or maybe Brownback don’t like Cheney too good (Dick is guilty of harbouring a lesbian in his family tree) and is hoping someone will “park” a mortar on Cheney’s big sweaty brow.

    “We should have quietly gone in there and given them a whole boat-load of money so they could sustain the strike and continue to cause unrest within Iran to try to topple the government.”

    Yeah, because things are pretty quiet in that region right now pRick so a little civil war should liven things up. Isn’t this exactly what we did in Chile? Gee, how did that turn out? Christ the man needs to be rocked to sleep with a very large rock.

    “I welcome the opportunity of having anyone assassinate Fidel Castro and any leader who is oppressing the people.”> [emphasis mine].

    Hmmmm. How does she define “oppress?” If she isn’t careful she’ll be riding the waterboards in Political Dissent Funland.

  • Ricky just needs a catchy name for his mass transportation coup, how about “the Bus of Pigs.”

  • “Or perhaps Cheney roam the streets of Baghdad snarling ‘Go fuck yourself,’ at the various warring factions until they flee.” – TIAO

    Oooooooooooooh that was good!! I had to walk away from the computer and stop laughing so I could wipe the tears away.

  • I have to admit that I don’t shed any tears for dead dictators, but I’d rather see them assassinated than have a whole country bombed in order to take one out.

  • Never underestimate the power of Cheney waving his little shotgun at all the brown people over there. Makes me shiver just to think about it…….

  • Dale, if we had any credibility with the rest of the world, we could bomb the dictators we hated, and get the rest of the world to help democratize their countries. We’re doing just that in Bosnia.

    But ShrubCo has flushed what little credibility we had down the toilet. Which wasn’t all that much, after we killed and deposed reams of democratically elected “bad guys” and installing our own dictators all over the world.

    One might argue that killing despots actually saves lives, but not when the deed is done by incompetent criminals. As it is right now, I’d say leaving them in place and using sanctions to get them out eventually is the best route. Of course sanctions kill people too, but there’s only so much you can do, and going beyond that is foolish.

    What really needs to happen is for BushCo to be delivered to the Hague, and then the world might back us up when we went after whichever bad guy needs whacking next.

  • The foundations of Republican foreign policy are “fear'” “arrogance,” and “ignorance.” The U. S. Embassy in Iraq has a staff of 1000, of whom 5 speak Arabic. It seems Bush’s secret wiretapping has failed to adequately expose the difference between Shiites and Sunnis. Iraq is awash in growing violence and U. S. sponsored corruption. Its middle class has moved next door. Somebody robbed a Baghdad bank of a million dollars today, and the police didn’t show. But the Rethugs earmarked a couple of million bucks for a victory celebration.

    Execution of this war rivals that of the Crimean War. The idiot child who started it is stamping his foot and having a temper tantrum because his daddy’s friends have told him what he did wrong and what he must do right.

    Ideas? There’s not a dozen brain cells among them, much less ideas.

  • To be the “party of ideas” would require some level of intelligence. I see no evidence of that in the quotes CB cites.

  • Something tells me that if Cheney and his minion were forced to park themselves in Baghdad today and remain until the hostilities were ended and we achieved victory that the troops would be home by the end of the year. It’s not such a bad idea.

  • I think Brownback is onto something. Wouldn’t mind having Cheney “parked” in Baghdad. Just not in the Green Zone; a tasteful villa in Sadr City, maybe? With a vacation get-away home in the Anbar province?

  • The Only States which The GOP managed to hold onto were in the deep south.

    They Should Call Themselves the “Dixie Theocratic Party” Or DTP. (Sounds like the name of an insecticide)

    And we should all yell “Y’all Don’t come back now, Ya’hear”

  • ***Then there’s Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen***

    It takes a true ReThug to say that a word-for-word, videotaped quote is “taking things out of context.” And only a ReThug member of Congress could be so inherently stupid as to suggest assassinating foreign heads of state. Clearly, that ineptitude belongs to a ReThug President—and is thus a violation of the Separation of [ReThug] Powers clause….

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