How Dumb Was Joe Barton?
My Congresscritter, Jefferson Beauregard “Oily” Miller of Chumuckla, really ticked off a lot of people in 2006, when he voted to lift the ban on off-shore drilling. If the Democratic Party of Florida had had any money, that would have been the end of his career.
He is nearly invisible in Congress and feels comfortable enough with voters in the first district of Florida to occasionally do something for the whacko base, like putting up a sign in his office proclaiming his friendship with South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson , the dillweed who yelled “You lie!” during a Presidential speech to a joint session of Congress.
The background is to give you an idea of how dangerous coastal Republicans think Joe Barton’s apology to BP was to their reelection chances, dangerous enough for “Oily” Miller to attack Barton:
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller called Thursday for fellow Republican Joe Barton of Texas to step down from his leadership position on the House Energy and Commerce Committee after Barton apologized to BP chief Tony Hayward.
“I am shocked by Congressman Joe Barton’s reprehensible comments,” Miller said in a statement. “Mr. Barton’s remarks are out of touch with this tragedy, and I feel his comments call into question his judgment and ability to serve in a leadership position on the Energy and Commerce Committee. He should step down as ranking member of the committee.”
Miller, a Chumuckla Republican, joined Obama adminstration officials and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio condemning the comments.
Miller isn’t interested in being hoisted upon his derrick or to become a “Gulf Gull” with tar and feathers.
Miller isn’t eligible for a Captain Louis Renault Award, despite the use of “shocked”, because Miller probably was shocked – by the local backlash, not Barton.
4 comments
…I’ve never thought of the current crop of Republican leadership as being dumb. They say lots of things that sound dumb to me but that are all part of a specific aggressive messaging plan that has at times, with the help of a MSM that has reduced its political coverage to a bunch of “they said/we said” sound bites, been remarkably successful over the last couple of decades. That leadership knew where they wanted to go with their “Obama’s Katrina” message and they knew perfectly well that there wasn’t any space to indulge in the sort of simpering knee-bending toward the increasingly hated BP that Barton engaged in…
It’s all perfectly self-serving (but all politics is any more), so it doesn’t surprise me all that much that minions like Miller and Big Dogs like Boehner are throwing ol’ Oily Joe over the side…
Barton may have been playing to some of his supporters back in his district, but he totally misread the mood of the country. Everyone who advocated “drill, baby, drill” should be having problems. The millions of gallons of oil leaking into the Gulf are certainly not reducing US dependence on “foreign oil”, and has thrown the Gulf economy into a nose dive.
The Republicans get away with so much that they just don’t think things through any more. It would be nice if someone reasonable was running against him this year, so he can go home and tend to his gas well.
For once, a corporate scandal is going to hit a lot of local right- wingers where it hurts, and in a way that’s going to be hard to obfuscate. I wish I had more faith, though, that anything good is going to come of all this that amounts to more than having to order “Fish and Freedom-Chips” in local restaurants. It’s hard to overestimate the effects of willful ignorance.
I have so much faith in the inhabitants of this state that I will predict that if oil drilling isn’t banned by initiative, some member of the state legislature will bring up a bill to authorize it in the next legislative session.
Just look at the number of times they have told people that cutting taxes is going to cause a new wave of prosperity while ignoring the fact that the only thing that has ever happened is further government debt.
Never underestimate the power of ignorance.