Republicans Turn to Comic Relief to Rebut Obama

OK, most people know that the Republicans are like the tribe wondering in the wilderness searching for their Moses but, after watching Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal give the Republican response to President Obama's speech to Congress last night I think they came up really short and have settled for Moe.

Jindal's argument against government involvement in helping the country recover from the economic disaster the Republican Party has placed us in was to remind us of the George W. Bush model of government mis-management and incompetence during Hurricane Katrina. Are you kidding me?!

Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us.

Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina, we have our doubts.

Let me tell you a story.

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I’d never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: ‘Well, I’m the Sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!’ I asked him: ‘Sheriff, what’s got you so mad?’ He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, ‘Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.’ And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: ‘Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!’ Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

Seriously Governor, the person that your president put in charge previously judged horse shows! That bureaucrat? He was given that job because he had a 100% Republican voting record.

When Jindal wasn't talking about the Republican model of governmental incompetence, he was doing Republican one-liners about the stimulus plan.

But Democratic leaders in Congress rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history - with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a ‘magnetic levitation’ line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, DC.

Largest spending bill? Over 40% of this package is tax cuts - set to begin on April 1st. So that would suggest that the spending portion of the package is somewhere around $475 Billion. Can you spell Iraq Occupation funding? Of course he drops the ‘magnetic levitation’ line from Las Vegas to Disneyland. No where in this package is this fantasy ever mentioned but, as we know, that doesn't stop the Republicans from saying it anyway.

I think Rachel Maddow sums it up pretty well in this clip from the MSNBC coverage of both Obama's speech and Jindal's response (courtesy of Crooks and Liars dot com)

I guess, if Jindal is the best the Republicans can put forward against Obama, then he shoud have a pretty good chance to move his agenda forward.

Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue