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On her show Wednesday night, Rachel Maddow dissected the Republicans’ response to Pres. Obama’s State of the Union speech and found that it was even worse than it first appeared:
Sen. John McCain committed a classic Washington gaffe yesterday — he inadvertently told the truth about his party’s motives in filibustering the nomination of Republican former Sen. Chuck Hagel are petty and vindictive:
McCAIN: But to be honest with you, Neil, it goes back to there’s a lot of ill will towards Senator Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly and say he was the worst President since Herbert Hoover and said the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War, which was nonsense. He was anti-his own party and people — people don’t forget that. You can disagree but if you’re disagreeable, then people don’t forget that.
Hagel was wrong about Bush — he was the worst president, not since Hoover, but from James Buchanan or possibly Franklin Pierce, of whom Bush is a direct descendant through his mother, Barbara Pierce Bush. Even that is being polite. By every metric for measuring presidencies, Bush was the worst president ever. For example, he left office as the most unpopular president in the history of polling.
But seriously, as with their brinkmanship on the economy, rather than putting the interests of the United States first, Republicans are once again playing politics even at the risk of hobbling the leadership of the United States military and weakening national security. They have also made filibustering presidential nominees a standard practice from now on.
Chris Matthews’ take on Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio’s rebuttal to the president’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night was solid gold:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I thought it was Tinkertoys. I thought it was primitive, something you would hear on a high school debating team … First of all, he went after government as some kind evil, then he admitted he had gone to school on student loans. Well, I went to school on student loans. My dad went to school on the GI Bill. Most of us have benefited from good government. Government’s worked for us. I got in the Peace Corps, changed my life. I mean, I’m very pro-government. And he admitted he was, too. He said, I love Medicare because of how it takes care of my mother, how it took care of my father with dignity. He said, I went the student loan route. I got my education. Where was the consistency here? I didn’t get it. He was saying he was a product of solid government and positive programs, and then he just trashed the whole thing.
And then he played the victim game that everybody seems to play. What’s the Republicans victims? They’re paying one in six dollars now, we have about 15 percent of GDP going to revenues. We’re spending 25 percent, who is being over-taxed? I mean, what are they talking about?
It was almost like a YAF-er convention speech, Young Americans for Freedom speech, from the 1950s. There was no originality to it. It was basic. Again, it was Tinkertoys. It was a kid’s presentation of a philosophy reduced to maybe the 9th grade level. I’m sorry, that’s what it was.
I fear for our neighbors to the north’s imminent collapse.
The result of drinking too many Labatts, perhaps?
It is with a sense of wonderment
That we note the Canadian Parliament
Actually debated preparations for a zombie apocalypse.
In the diplomatic ranks, trained professionals toil,
To keep the peace and tamp down foreign turmoil.
But for Greek ambassador,
Trump picked an artful dodger —
The grifting, drunken blackmailer Kimberly Guilfoyle.
