{"id":9306,"date":"2006-12-11T13:58:45","date_gmt":"2006-12-11T18:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9306.html"},"modified":"2006-12-11T13:58:45","modified_gmt":"2006-12-11T18:58:45","slug":"republican-lawmakers-say-the-darndest-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/republican-lawmakers-say-the-darndest-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican lawmakers say the darndest things"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

For example, there’s Sen. Sam Brownback’s (R-Kan.) solution<\/a> for the crisis in Iraq.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

Then we have outgoing Sen. Rick Santorum’s (R-Pa.) thoughts<\/a> on changes in Iran.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s exactly this kind of insightful wisdom that helped Santorum lose by 18 points last month.
\n
\nThen there’s Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) on U.S. policy towards Cuba<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

And, finally, there’s Sen. Jim Inhofe’s (R-Okla.) latest nonsense<\/a> on climate change.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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

We are all skeptics now.<\/strong> 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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

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<\/a>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}