Boehner’s Friday Flight Of Fancy

Sounds to me like the House Minority Leader is grasping at straws big time (or maybe his chain smoking habit marked by that "every-ready pack of Camels" has created a little too much “fog in his noggin” – here)...

By the reckoning of the Ohio Republican, the hard-fought Democratic presidential contest is going to leave one group of supporters or another sorely disappointed.

He figures some of those folks might then choose to back Republican John McCain or stay home altogether in November, either of which is potentially good news for House Republicans, who find themselves in a deep hole and still digging with the general election fast approaching.

“When you start to look at the fallout from the Democratic nomination process – the Democrats not showing up to vote – you are starting to create a scenario where we are in better shape than people think,” said Mr. Boehner. “You are going to have people voting for McCain or not voting at all. The picture is not as bleak as people want to paint it.”

That’s way too funny.

Since Boehner doesn’t have any numbers to provide for comparison purposes, I won’t do the research he should have done himself before making that charge. But I have news for him; the complaints about the real, actual, five-day work week from the 110th Congress (an implied reason for the Dems supposedly blowing off votes) weren’t coming from Democrats. The most notable whiner was one-man-idiot-quote-machine Jack Kingston, U.S. House Rep of Georgia, who defended a “three-day work week” and said House members “can keep in touch with their BlackBerrys” here.

Everyone from the Peach State who voted for this yutz, please raise your left hand – no, your “other” left…

And as far as people “not showing up” goes (or, more precisely, leaving work undone, from here)…

The (Republican) 109th Congress left office in the early hours of Saturday morning, December 9, having logged fewer days of legislative activity than even the infamous “Do-Nothing Congress” of 1948. Notably absent from the following list of last minute “accomplishments” is comprehensive immigration reform, a minimum wage increase, and nine out of 11 appropriations bills needed to fully fund federal activity for the 2007 fiscal year.

The failure to pass a working budget for the federal government—the fundamental constitutional task of Congress—highlights the failures of the conservative leadership of the departing Congress. Indeed, the incoming chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees, Rep. David Obey (D-WI) and Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), took a look at the mess left to them and yesterday announced they will hold all spending at 2006 levels after ejecting all special earmarks and begin a more deliberative and open budgeting process next year for the next fiscal year beginning in October 2007.

And speaking of hard-fought campaigns, the Repug “shock troops” are sooo united behind St. McCain, aren’t they, as noted here…

James Dobson, founder of the hugely influential evangelical group Focus on the Family, said last month: "I cannot and I will not vote for Senator John McCain as a matter of conscience."

But as the Times story notes, it’s all “good news for Republicans”…somehow.