Thursday, June 2, 2011

Most Obnoxious Republican of the Day: Jeff Landry

Ed. note: As it turns out, both Richard and I wrote about this at roughly the same time. (You know what they say about great minds.) Instead of having two pretty similar posts, I thought I'd just merge our two posts into one. -- MJWS

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MJWS


A freshman GOP lawmaker rejected an invitation to the White House on Wednesday, saying he didn't want to be "lectured" by President Obama.

"I have respectfully declined the president's invitation tothe White House today," Rep. Jeff Landry (La.) said in a statement. "I don'tintend to spend my morning being lectured to by a president whose failedpolicies have put our children and grandchildren in a huge burden of debt."

Respectfully, Rep. Landry, you're an idiot. And you're a speck of dust compared to President Obama. You think you'd be lectured, but really you'd just be exposed as an ideological extremist and partisan hack. Like the rest of your party.

Failed policies?

Like the auto bailout that saved tens of thousands of jobs and rescued the auto industry -- and a huge swathe of the U.S. economy connected to that industry, from the brink of destruction?

Like the Wall Street bailout that saved the economy, and global credit markets, from plunging into catastropic collapse?

Like agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts, including for the wealthy? Isn't that something you liked?

Like TARP? Hey, even Paul Ryan voted for that.

And if you really think it's Obama who has "put our children and grandchildren in a huge burden of debt," you really are an ignorant fool. Do you have no historical memory at all? Do you remember anything that happened before 2008?

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RKB

We have an occasional feature here at The Reaction called the "Craziest Republican of the Day."

Just this one time I want to modify that slightly to make Republican Louisiana Congressman Jeff Landry the "Most Obnoxious Republican of the Day."

I do this because Landry rejected an invitation to meet with the president at the White House on Wednesday because he didn't want "to be lectured to" by President Obama. This was as part of a meeting that the president had scheduled with the entire GOP House caucus.

According to the The Hill, Landry said the following:

I have respectfully declined the president's invitation to the White House today. I don't intend to spend my morning being lectured to by the president whose failed policies have put our children and grandchildren in a huge burden of debt.

This is just pathetic. If our national leaders can't show each other the common courtesy of meeting to discuss the policies we need to move the country forward, we are in more trouble than any of us thought possible. I know Landry must be hoping this will play well back home, but our elected representatives have to be better than this.

The office of the presidency has to be respected no matter how little regard one may have for the individual holding the office. Conservatism used to be about respecting tradition and process. In so many ways this current crop of Republicans aren't conservatives at all. They're miserable little brats.

Hey Landry. I'll do you one better. Go fuck yourself.