Republican Hypocrisy category archive

No doubt the Honorable Mr. Marshall’s having been one of “those kind of people” had nothing to do with it.

From TPM:

Looks like Senate Judiciary Republicans have at least one unified talking point today: Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to ever serve on the Supreme Court, was an “activist judge.” As Elena Kagan kept on her listening face, multiple senators slammed both Marshall’s judicial philosophy and her service as his clerk in the late 1980s.

Grandstanding bigotry is such a tribute to Republicanism.

The hysteria spreads.

Underlying this is that modern Republicanism feeds on creating and exploiting fear.

“Personally, I take every thing Glenn says on faith . . . because there’s never any evidence . . . .”

Martin Luther King, Jr., is spinning in his grave.

Via TPM.

They really do think that they should have it both ways.

Just to get this straight, I’m not against farm subsidies per se, as long as they go family farmers, rather than to Huge Corporate Oligopolies.

It’s the hypocrisy.

Down with Tyranny looks at the Know Nothings–the Teabaggers of their time.

Willing to sacrifice the Gulf.

Dick Polman:

When word got around yesterday afternoon that BP had indeed agreed to establish a $20-billion escrow redemption fund, I knew it was only a matter of hours before Obama’s critics jerked their knees anew, and declared that the president (whom they had previously condemned for not being tough enough during the oil spill crisis) was now being too tough, especially in his attitude toward poor old BP. So I started the countdown. Three, two, one…sure enough, there it was: an email blast, late in the day, from the House conservatives who call themselves the Republican Study Committee. Who better to defend the worst environmental despoilers in the nation’s history, and paint BP as the victim of presidential thuggery?

Their gall no longer surprises, but it still appalls.

Addendum:

The Richmonder weighs in.

Addendum-Dee-Dum-Dum:

Steve Benen:

We talked earlier about the lengths Republicans are going to side with BP, despite the oil giant’s role in the worst environmental disaster in American history. I argued that the GOP is approaching the point at which Dems will reasonably be able to argue that Republicans are siding with BP over the country.

(snip)

I just never thought I’d see the day when a leading Republican publicly groveled to a foreign CEO, who just happens to be leading a company responsible for a devastating oil spill disaster.

Steve Chapman in the Chicago Trib:

Not long ago, Barack Obama was pilloried for being too activist, too meddlesome and too inclined to see himself as the messiah. He was forcing health care reform down our throats, running General Motors, wrecking the financial system and promising to make the oceans recede.

But that was a different guy, from a parallel universe. The President Obama we all know is a passive, detached do-nothing. Or so we have been hearing since the BP oil spill gained our attention.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican who once denounced Democrats for scheming to “increase dependence on government,” now demands that Washington do more for his state.

Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who recently urged Congress to zero out the Environmental Protection Agency, challenges the administration to “save the Louisiana coast, save the fisheries, save the wetlands.”

Funny how nobody said that at the 2008 Republican National Convention, where the chant was “drill, baby, drill.” Back then, real men didn’t protect sea turtles.

Read the whole thing.

Afterthought:

If President Obama were to raise high his staff, part the waters of the Potomac River, and lead us all to the land of milk and honey, Republicans would find fault.

They would fault him for holding his staff at the wrong angle, parting the river too much or too little, using a staff of ash rather than maple, picking the wrong place to part the waters, or finding too much milk and not enough honey, or something. Or all those things.

We don’t know what the complaint would be, but we can be certain that it would be.

Finding fault when you have no ideas is easier than finding ideas.

Rachel Maddow looks for the outrage:

Excerpt:

As of June, BP has received $837 million this year in federal contracts. Where is the call to defund this company?

Some of the same Republicans were basically tripping over themselves to bury ACORN last year are lining up behind BP.

The Republican Party, then and now the Party of Privilege.

Via the Brad Blog.

The Boston Globe skewers the silliness of teabaggery:

. . . Tea Partiers and others galvanized by anger over the financial meltdown have somehow ended up embracing candidates who would give Wall Street license to wreak greater havoc. It’s an impressive con job: Candidates whose real agenda is a deregulated market are claiming the mantle of the antibailout movement.

Jamelle Bouie points how “colorblind” isn’t:

In an earlier era, this same “colorblind racist philosophy” was used to craft laws targeting African-Americans. Rarely were Jim Crow laws explicitly racist, instead, they relied on “colorblind” mechanisms — like poll taxes and grandfather clauses — to achieve the desired, anti-black outcome. Arizona’s immigration law is obviously not the same as Jim Crow, but it’s animated by the same basic idea of “colorblindness” — if something doesn’t explicitly mention race, then it can’t be racist. And the converse is also true, anything that mentions race is de facto racist, even if it’s designed to ameliorate racial prejudice . . . .

(I remember my daddy talking about paying his poll tax. He was white. He could afford it.)

While the Booman describes how the odious Southern Strategy, which the Republican Party created to capture the South, has captured the Republican Party:

The modern GOP doesn’t have a coherent governing philosophy. But they are more united than ever. Race hatred is central to that unity, . . . .

Read both posts. And weep along with Lincoln.

Persons who call themselve “Libertarians say that they believe in the Constitution (indeed, they speak of it almost as if it were inerrant), except, of course, when they don’t.

On the same topic, the Atlanta Journal Constitution recalls a pamphlet from the 1964 Goldwater campaign:

EMPLOYEES
READ THIS:

Did you know that Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Bill can get you fired from your job and give it to a person of another race? No matter what ability you have to do your job … or how much seniority you have on your job … you can lose your job because of Johnson’s Civil Rights Bill. This is your last chance. Vote to put an end to racial favoritism…vote to protect your job…your family…your home.

EMPLOYERS
READ THIS:

This is your last chance to save your freedom to run your own business as you choose!

Color, of course, has nothing to do with it.

Steve M.:

. . . I’d say it’s going to take about an hour and a half for the right-wing talking points to change from While the Gulf is being destroyed, hapless Obama is ceding power to BP!!! to See? The government did nothing and private industry got the spill under control! Just goes to show — you can’t trust big government to do anything right!!!

To answer Bob Cesca’s question.