I’m embarrassed to admit that I foolishly believed congressional Republicans were no longer capable of surprising me. Looking back over the last 12 or so years, I naively assumed there were some tactics even the congressional GOP wouldn’t try.
Thirty-one-year-old Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) is not a large man, standing perhaps 5 feet 3 inches tall in thick soles. But he packed a whole lot of chutzpah when he walked into the House TV gallery yesterday to demand that the new Democratic majority give the new Republican minority all the rights that Republicans had denied Democrats for years.
“The bill we offer today, the minority bill of rights, is crafted based on the exact text that then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi submitted in 2004 to then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert,” declared McHenry, with 10 Republican colleagues arrayed around him. “We’re submitting this minority bill of rights, which will ensure that all sides are protected, that fairness and openness is in fact granted by the new majority.”
Omitted from McHenry’s plea for fairness was the fact that the GOP had ignored Pelosi’s 2004 request — while routinely engaging in the procedural maneuvers that her plan would have corrected…. Anne Kornblut of the New York Times asked McHenry if his complaint might come across as whining.
“I’m not whining,” he whined.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) added, “Washington, D.C. has just enacted a smoking ban, yet somehow Nancy Pelosi and her liberal colleagues have found a way to lock themselves in a smoky backroom in the Capitol to make deals for the next two years.”
As Paul Kiel asked, “Is there such a thing as irony-deafness?”
We’re not just talking about a few right-wing backbenchers hoping to give talk radio something to complain about. As Kiel noted, even House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who was largely responsible for making sure House Dems were neither seen nor heard the past several years, issued a kvetching press release, complaining that the Dems are “denying the citizens of this country an open, honest discussion of the issues” during the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress.
My favorite complaint came by way of Rep. Adam Putnam, chairman of the House Republican Conference, who whined, “Half of the Congress has been cut out of the process.” Putnam, of course, was in the leadership last year, ensuring that half of the Congress was cut out of the process.
To their credit, reporters covering the Hill aren’t stupid.
It fell to CNN’s Dana Bash to point out the awkward truth. “You can play back, almost verbatim, Democrats . . . saying almost exactly what you all just said,” she said. “So is there a little bit of hypocrisy in you saying that you want minority rights?”
“This is a missed opportunity to really change the way that the House does business,” Putnam offered, citing Democrats’ campaign promises for “a new way of doing business.”
“What stopped you from taking that opportunity when you were still in the majority?” inquired Rick Klein of the Boston Globe.
Funny, none of them wanted to answer that one.
Kudos to Chief Deputy Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) for making the bold concession:
When asked why Republicans were now endorsing proposals they long ignored, incoming Chief Deputy Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) conceded the GOP had erred last year.
“In hindsight, I think [Pelosi] was right,” Cantor told reporters.
Hindsight is a powerful force, isn’t it?