Such utterly blatant pandering ought to be below ANY politician. Even tea partiers.
It was a VERY busy couple of days at the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. First, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann made an utter spectacle of herself, diving in front of cameras to slather herself in patriotic, anti O-BAH-mah rhetoric with elderly WWII vets as a back drop.
RNC Chair Reince Priebus gave a press conference there, pledging $150 million of sweet, sweet Republican cash to staff the memorial so that it can remain open for the next 30 days.
Michigan Congressmen Kerry Benotvolio and Bill Huizenga made their appearances. So did Texas Rep. Bill Huizenga, Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn, Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler, and, of course, today’s Biggest Jerk in Congress Texas Rep. Randy Neugebauer. Then there was Rep. Darrell Issa from California (who is, of course, opening an investigation on the closure of national parks), Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, and Iowa Rep. Steve King. It was getting so crowded at the WWII memorial that I can imagine them having to turn away visitors, including actual WWII vets, because there wasn’t any room with all of the Republicans and the television crews there to capture their grandstanding.
(Kentucky Rep. Rand Paul doesn’t appear to have made a visit but he didn’t miss the opportunity to call the park rangers who manage our national monuments “government goons“.)
It got me wondering: were there also Republicans at the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial? Anne and I visited there earlier this year and there were a LOT of people visiting it, even on a bitterly cold winter day.
Yeah. Probably not. Not exactly the Republicans “base”, is it?
What about the Korean War memorial? Were there Republicans giving interviews and holding press conferences there, too? Were they spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep that powerful monument open, too? What about the incredible Viet Nam War memorial? The vets from that war make up a tragically high proportion of the number of homeless people in our country, people the government shutdown orchestrated by the Republicans are going to get hit the hardest. Did any Republicans stop by to express their outrage?
Not surprisingly, my trip around Google this evening didn’t show any major Republican events at any of these places. It’s just not good optics for their voting base, I guess. It’s so much more politically useful to them to be photographed with a nice old WWII vet in his wheelchair behind them than it is to stand in front of a crowd of African Americans wondering why they can’t get in to view the only monument in Washington, D.C. erected in honor of a black man.
The stench of hypocrisy coming from the pandering Republicans in Washington is truly nauseating these past couple of days. But it’s the hypocrisy regarding the shut down of our national monuments that is the most nauseating of all.
Photos by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog.
