Blasphemy

First thing’s first: The Republicans are wrong about off-shore drilling. It’s just another kowtow to the oil companies that control them, and it will produce little to no oil for years to come, not to mention that fact that it just furthers our addiction. There, now that’s out of the way.

I also recognize that yesterday’s Republican protest on the House floor was nothing but a political stunt designed to win points and get people like me buzzing about it.

Well, it worked.

If you haven’t heard, yesterday Nancy Pelosi successfully adjourned the House for a five-week vacation without allowing a vote on offshore drilling. In response, the Republicans refused to leave the floor, staying instead to give rousing speeches in the dark, without microphones, and only to the 30 or so members of the public in the gallery, since CSPAN turns its cameras off when the House is adjourned. Kudos to Rep. John Culberson of Texas, who used Twitter and Qik to post instant updates.

Go ahead, click the link and read the whole Politico post. I promise you won’t be able to get through the whole thing without smiling at least a little. And that’s my point.

The Republicans managed to inspire me on an issue I completely disagree with them about. Can you imagine Congressional Democrats doing that? Of course you can’t. If you could, we would have seen evidence of it in the past two years.

But instead all we’ve gotten is a half-hearted attempt to seem like they’ve accomplished everything (or at least anything) they’ve said they’re going to accomplish.

Speaker Pelosi gets to hide behind the fact that the Senate is holding everything up due to the 60-vote cloture rule. But where is the attempt to rally the American people behind these bills? Where was the response to the talk radio condemnation of immigration reform last summer, which got so many people to call their Senators that it jammed the Senate switchboard and scared Members into voting against it?

We haven’t had that kind of movement surrounding any issue, and Nancy Pelosi is as much to blame for that as Harry Reid, who, well, I’ve dealt with his lack of energy on this blog before. And when he dared Senate Republicans to give up their break to debate the energy crisis, they may not have taken him up on it, but the House Republicans sure did; several of them turned around from their trips home to give speeches during the protest.

In contrast, the only thing we’ve had to be excited about in the last two years is a guy who is currently tied with John McCain when he should be ten points ahead (more on that in a future post).

So congratulations to the House Republicans, who managed to stand up for something they believe in, rather than sitting around hoping an election will fix everything.