Republican Congressman Peter King’s epic rant against his party’s leadership in the House is all over the web today. People, it would seem, like seeing Republican’s awaken to the fact that it’s their party that’s the problem. And that’s what happened today, as King went to the press, irate that his party’s leaders, despite their promises, had neglected to call a vote last night on the $60 billion Hurricane Sandy aid package, which had already been passed in the Senate with bipartisan support. Calling it, “absolutely disgraceful,” King said, “turning your back on people who are starving and freezing is not a Republican value.” According to King, this, in a nutshell, explains why, “they’re becoming a minority party.” And, judging from what I’m seeing online, people across the country are eating it up, like they did when, prior to the election, Chris Christie told Romney to stay the hell out of New Jersey with his photo crews.
Here’s video of King:
It’s kind of like that Mitchell & Webb episode where the two German soldiers, after noting the skulls on their uniforms, come to the realization that they’re “the baddies.”
The thing is, up until Hurricane Sandy hit, King was just as big an asshole as the rest of them, content to pass the buck and kick the can down the road, just like everyone else in his party. But, then, the hurricane decided to hit his district. And that, apparently, changed everything. Suddenly, it would seem, his McCarthy-like Muslim witch hunts and his staunch opposition to global warming science, didn’t seem quite so important. (King has voted to bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, voted against tax incentives for alternative energy production and conservation, and voted against enforcing limits on CO2 global warming pollution, among other things.) Now that he has to contend with a natural disaster, it’s a different story. When it’s his constituents who are “starving and freezing,” and not those in New Orleans, it’s apparently time to drop the pandering “drill, baby, drill” bullshit for a minute, and get serious about things.
I’ve yet to hear anyone on television ask King whether, as a result of Hurricane Sandy, he regrets his votes to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions could continue to increase unchecked. While I can appreciate his anger at his fellow Republicans for not coming to the aid of the people of New York, I’d love to hear someone say, “Maybe, instead of calling hearings about mosques being built, you could have spent a little time getting educated on global climate change and its impact on weather systems.” That, I think, would be refreshing.
Now, if we could just arrange it so that a deadly hurricane hit every Republican Congressional district. Then, maybe, we could get somewhere.