Is Senator Coburn Throwing the Base Under the Bus?
Update: I took my original title from a comment someone made about Coburn’s comments on Facebook- a friend pointed out that I had used the term “enemy” which, given the circumstances I commented on below and the fact that most of the readers of this post will not have read the comment I took the original title from, is inappropriate. I have changed the title, and apologize for not catching this before.
Yesterday, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) defended Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) as a decent person:
“Come on now. She is nice – how many of you all have met her? She’s a nice person,” Coburn said as he went on to lecture the crowd about civility.
“Just because somebody disagrees with you dodn’t (sic) mean they’re not a good person,” Coburn said. “I’ve been in the senate for five years and I’ve taken a lot of that, because I’ve been on the small side –- both in the Republican Party and the Democrat Party.”
Coburn then went on to say that conservatives should not listen solely to Fox News, and refuted a talking point on Fox regarding the insurance mandate in the new health care law.
During the town hall, Coburn was hissed and booed at. Personally, I agree with him about Fox- conservatives need to use other resources to get their news. Fox is but one of the many available, and one that is certainly skewed both ideologically and, sometimes, factually.
However, I disagree with Coburn that Pelosi is a nice person. I’ve seen too much of her on TV, and read too much about her, to think otherwise. As such, I think Coburn is caught up in the Beltway attitude that caused former Senator Kennedy (D-MA) and Senator Hatch (R-UT) to be good friends- namely, that one Member should gloss over the bad things a Member has done.
This is not to say that political disagreements should get in the way of friendship- quite the opposite, in fact. I have many friends who are Democrats and liberals, and I expect most Senators and Representatives have friends on the opposite side of the aisle (I ran into Reps. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, for example, walking and chatting together). However, when Kennedy kills a young woman and gets away with it, or Pelosi lies on national TV about the Catholic Church’s position on abortion, friendship and camaraderie should be hard to come by. Coburn is a great senator, and I believe his intent was to hearken back to the days of Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan, when they used to drink together after work…but to call Pelosi a good or nice person is really a stretch. There are many other examples of people Coburn could have used, including honorable and respectable Democratic Members such as Russ Feingold or Ron Wyden- Members who stick to their guns and don’t have the records of lying and manipulation Kennedy and Pelosi do.
Have White House Officials Ever Had A Real Job?
“Name and shame” is apparently the Treasury’s new tactic for going after mortgage companies that don’t do what the government wants. In short, some mortgage companies *gasp* are running a business like a business! The fiends…
Okay, enough sarcasm for the moment. Apparently, the Treasury people don’t want mortgage companies to keep their interest rates where they are, and the situation has become so bad that “[t]he Obama administration will crack down on mortgage companies that are failing to do enough to help borrowers at risk of foreclosure, as part of a broad effort to boost participation in its mortgage assistance program.” In other words, more government intervention in the markets. Just what we need. (Note the sarcasm…)
According to Investor’s Business Daily, “To shame loan servicers into doing a better job, Treasury will publish a list in December of those that are lagging.” First they came after Limbaugh, then after Cramer, then AIG and Fox. Now they are coming after mortgage companies. Whatever one’s opinion is of AIG, Limbaugh and the rest that the current administration has personally targeted thus far, it is bad public policy for the president of a democratic republic to go after private citizens and companies like this. Mind you, the mortgage companies haven’t been accused of doing anything illegal (unlike ACORN). They have merely not bowed and scraped to President Obama.
Update: Regarding the title of this post, Jonah Goldberg of NRO says only 10% of the current presidential cabinet has private-sector experience. So maybe the answer is a giant NO. (Big surprise, that.)
Update 2: Goldberg’s information is incorrect. I apologize for the error. Many of the advisors President Obama relies on do have private sector experience- but they’re still wrong. (And the experience is limited…)
