GOP recruiting class just the same old retreads

It seems as though Republicans are recruiting some candidates for Congress-- many of whom are the same old retreads who were part of the problem before.

Not anything new, but a bunch of former members of Congress who they claim are supposed to be something new. Mostly the same ones who were in Congress during the 1990's and early 2000's and helped put the roots of the present crisis in place.

Epitomatically they are trumpeting former Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, who will challenge his successor, Sen. Evan Bayh. Recall that Senator Coats is the Senator who said the day after Bill Clinton launched missile strikes in an attempt to get Osama bin Laden on August 18, 1998 (eleven days after the African embassy bombings and a day when we had some intelligence about where bin Laden was holding a meeting,)

"I think we fear that we may have a President that is desperately seeking to hold onto his job in the face of a firestorm of criticism and calls for him to step down.”

Senator Dan Coats, R-IN August 19, 1998.

The full context of the statement is that also on August 18, 1998 Monica Lewinsky was giving a deposition in Manhattan and Coats and other Republicans were apparently upset that the all-important Monica scandal didn't get the headline for that day (though taking a headline from the Monica scandal would have been what would happen if Bill Clinton launched the missile strike against bin Laden on pretty much any day during 1998.)

I'm sure that Coats' statement calling on the President to resign for attacking Osama bin Laden must have been received with comfort and great mirth by bin Laden.

I'm sure that there are some opportunities out there for Republicans, especially given Democrats' failure to pass health care legislation and other items on their agenda that have caused a lot of voters to decide that not much has changed. But the idea that running candidates against them who themselves were part of the last crop of failures, even up to and including a candidate who once said the President should resign for attacking Osama bin Laden, is hardly a recruiting class designed to benefit from voter discontent.

Unemployment vote shows Arizona Republicans in Congress are more conservative than other Republicans

Just in case you hadn't gotten the idea yet that Arizona Republicans are way off on the right end of the political spectrum, even to the extent that they are way beyond the mainstream of conservatives,

Today the house voted 403-12 to extend unemployment benefits for fourteen more weeks (plus six more in states with the highest unemployment.) This is a no-brainer with unemployment poised to break 10%, and the house action follows a 98-0 Senate vote.

Among the conservative members of the house who followed the unanimous vote of the Senate were John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Dan Burton, Eric Cantor, Duncan Hunter, Peter King, Mike Pence, Jeanne Schmidt and Joe Wilson.

Not exactly a list of bleeding-heart liberals there.

In fact, the three Republicans in the Arizona delegation-- all three of them-- Jeff Flake, Trent Franks and John Shadegg-- showed that they are way more conservative than even the rest of the house GOP by providing fully one fourth of the 'no' votes.

In Arizona, the most extreme views that are held anywhere else are unfortunately the 'party line' view held by many if not most of our GOP elected officials. Today's vote once again puts the extreme conservatism of Arizona Republicans on display for everyone to see.

Republican demolition derby

You'd think that with one-party rule in the legislature and the Governor's office, Arizona Republicans wouldn't have any trouble getting a budget together. After all, the legislature was continually at loggerheads with former Governor Napolitano, a Democrat, and you'd think they'd welcome an opportunity to make their case to voters that they can get things done without having to inconveniently involve Democrats.

Well, that's half right. They have in fact shut Democrats out of the process, but it seems like this Republican leadership is truly disfunction on display.

After having to go to a three A.M. vote in the Senate just to force together an atrocious budget bill that they could send to the Governor (and in the process, there were several Republicans who crossed party lines in the house to vote against it,) the GOP leadership haven't sent the budget bills to her yet because she said she will veto it. So they are holding it back, presumably so if she vetoes it then there won't be another bill ready by June 30 (certainly not one she will sign) and she will have to shut down state government.

With negotiations at an impasse, the Governor is now going to court to try and force the legislative leadership to send her the bill now, so she can veto it.

Keep in mind too that the legislature has been in session since January and they spent five full months doing practically nothing, so they could force everything through this month-- so if there is a time crunch then perhaps it means that we should reduce the legislative calendar to just a month, with perhaps one more month for committee hearings. After all, if they are going to sit on their hands anyway for five months just to bring time into play, they could do that just as easily in February as they could in June.

It's hard to know where this is going, this battle between a bunch of ideologically driven loony tunes who run the legislature and a weak, unelected Governor, but one thing is for sure:

The favorite refrain of Republicans when they don't get the job done of 'blame the Democrats' won't work this time, with Republicans fighting it out with other Republicans.

As viscious as it's getting, I wonder if Michael Vick's next project will be to collect a stable full of Arizona Republicans to go at each other and fight it out to the end.