Foot in Mouth Disease Affects Republicans

The United States Senate has long been considered the world's greatest diliberative body. Unlike the fractious House, the Senate is supposed to be more genteel.

Well, you can throw that belief out the window.

Here, via the Moderate Voice are two examples where the GOP has decided to ditch comity in favor of demogogery:

On the same day that a federal judge whose family was assassinated testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about courthouse safety, Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) described Democratic efforts opposing some of President Bush’s judicial nominees as “leadership-led use of Cloture vote to kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees.”

Federal Judge Joan Lefkow was a target for assassination, and her husband and mother were murdered in February of this year. Democratic Whip Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) hammered Frist's comments and asked they be struck from the Senate record.

Durbin remarked, "When words are expressed during the court of the debate that those of us who oppose these nominees are setting out to 'kill, to defeat or to assassinate these nominees, those words should be taken from this record. Those words go too far."

Note to Senator Frist: Two appointees who don't get a vote on the full Senate floor is not equal to assasination. In light of the federal judge who lost her husband and mother to a crazed man and also the federal judge in Atlanta who was murdered, this statement is callous. It might please the far right lunatics who you think are the base of the GOP these days, but it will turn off moderates and swing voters-those people you need to keep the Senate GOP.

However the prize for most insensitive remark has to go to Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania who decided to put all the yelling from Dems about axing the fillibuster in prespective:

AND WE SHOULDN'T GO MUCKING AROUND IN THIS INSTITUTION AND CHANGING THE WAY WE'VE DONE THINGS,
PARTICULARLY WHEN IT COMES TO THE BALANCE OF POWERS BETWEEN THE THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. AND THE INDEPENDENCE OF ONE OF THOSE BRANCHES OF THE JUDICIARY. WE MUST TREAD VERY CAREFULLY BEFORE WE GO RADICALLY CHANGING THE WAY WE DO THINGS THAT HAS SERVED THIS COUNTRY WELL, AND WE HAVE RADICALLY CHANGED THE WAY WE DO THINGS HERE. SOME ARE SUGGESTING WE'RE TRYING TO CHANGE THE LAW, WE'RE TRYING TO BREAK THE RULES. REMARKABLE. REMARKABLE HUBRIS. I MEAN, IMAGINE, THE RULE HAS BEEN IN PLACE FOR 214 YEARS THAT THIS IS THE WAY WE CONFIRM JUDGES. BROKEN BY THE OTHER SIDE TWO YEARS AGO, AND THE AUDACITY OF SOME MEMBERS TO STAND UP AND SAY, HOW DARE YOU BREAK THIS RULE. IT'S THE EQUIVALENT OF ADOLF HITLER IN 1942 "I'M IN PARIS. HOW DARE YOU INVADE ME. HOW DARE YOU BOMB MY CITY? IT'S MINE." THIS IS NO MORE THE RULE OF THE SENATE THAN IT WAS THE RULE OF THE SENATE BEFORE NOT TO FILIBUSTER. IT WAS AN UNDERSTANDING AND AGREEMENT, AND IT HAS BEEN ABUSED. IN A SENSE, WHAT WE SEE HERE ON THE FLOOR OF THE UNITED STATES...

I've never much liked when Democrats raise the specter of Hitler for every Republican action because it relativizes all the evil that Hitler committed. Well, this wasn't any better. The Senator should be ashamed for making such comments.

I don't know if the Dems should be using a tactic that was used by segregationists, but I also think that is their right if they don't think a nominee is well qualified.

Such harsh rhetoric, be it liberal or conservative, does nothing but play to the "red meat" crowd. It does nothing to advance our society. And it only shows how pathetic politics has become.