During the past twenty months, the Republican minority in the House of Representatives has shown time and time again how petty and childish they can be.
They did it again just yesterday when the Republican Minority Leader John Boehner offered a resolution to censure the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, New York Congressman Charlie Rangel, based on an article in the New York Times. It was such a sad attempt that over 60 Republicans either voted “present,” for the motion to kill the resolution, or didn’t show up to vote at all. The three Republicans from Monroe County- Walsh, Kuhl, and Reynolds- all voted against the motion to kill the resolution (in other words, they voted to censure Charlie Rangel).
Of course, the Republicans didn’t want to hold their own people accountable by censuring any of the dozens of congressional Republicans who are under investigation, indicted, or in the case of one Idaho senator, actually plead guilty to soliciting sex from an undercover officer. Instead, they tried to slime the reputation and end the political career of Congressman Rangel based on a newspaper article.
And while yesterday the Republican minority was intent on showing us how pitiful they are, today they were committed to telling us just how pathetically weak they have become. The House adjourned today for its usual summer recess, but Republicans decided to stick around for a few hours because they were upset that the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi didn’t hold a vote on releasing more land for Big Oil to drill on. Without getting into the debate of more drilling, here is what happened:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House, turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.
Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) called it a “new Boston Tea Party!”
Indeed, they are the new Floundering Fathers.
Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) said he was “not leaving until we call this Congress back into session and vote for energy independence.”
He left at about five o’clock with everyone else. They barely made it six hours, let along five weeks. And as we all know, drilling does nothing to make us energy independent.
Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the dimly lit chamber is a “vision of the future by the Democrat Party: The lights are out, there’s no power, and the air conditioning is gonna go off soon.”
Hilarious. This coming from the same guy who lost three solidly Republican seats, including Speaker Hastert’s old district, in only the last few months. The National Republican Campaign Committee, for the first time in recent history, is far behind their Democratic counterparts in fund-raising. Tom Cole is such a horrible campaign chairman that it looks almost impossible for him to avoid the unprecedented this November: lose even more Republican districts after the “wave election” of 2006. In the truest sense of the word, Tom Cole is a loser.
The truth is, Republicans are still suffering withdrawal from their addiction to absolute power. They had better get used to it, because they are destined to be in the minority for a long time to come.