It goes to John Cornyn:
“I think it’s good that there’s going to be some money there, I don’t know whether it’s going to be enough money to pay all the claims. They should pay the legitimate claims. But the part that Representative Barton is expressing some concern about, that I share the concern, is this has really become a political issue for the President and he’s trying to deal with it by showing how tough he’s being against BP. The problem is BP’s the only one who really is in control of shutting down this well, and he’s trying to mitigate, I think, his own political problems.”
Let me ask you something. If Cornyn thinks it’s good that there is some money available for BP’s victims but he is not sure that $20 billion is enough, then why isn’t he asking for BP to cough up more money rather than worrying that the president might be mitigating some of his political problems by securing the funds?
Could Cornyn get any more nakedly cynical? He represents people on the Gulf Coast, for chrissakes. And look at this:
Yesterday, the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the policy arm of House Republicans, said: “BP’s reported willingness to go along with the White House’s new fund suggests that the Obama Administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics. These actions are emblematic of a politicization of our economy that has been borne out of this Administration’s drive for greater power and control.”
That’s just as nutty as what Michele Bachmann said. The GOP wants to convince people that Obama is taking over private industry in this country in some kind of Hugo Chavezish revolution. But the truth is that if Obama declared BP’s American operations the property of the people of the Gulf Coast most people would call it leadership.
