bapifar01: Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

Wednesday, 6 April 2011

Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

Japan disaster relief sites list

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE?

Whap!!!

Well knock me down and call me Hiram McSnickerpants. I don't remember this happening before. A gaggle of Maine state senators wrote an op-ed piece that appeared yesterday in Maine's largest newspaper, The Portland Press Herald (and also ran in The Kennebec Journal and The Morning Sentinel). Seems they're a bit peeved at our Republican governor for being such a loose cannon. They're tired of him picking needless fights by, for example, telling the NAACP to "kiss my butt," hauling away a history-of-the-labor-movement mural from the lobby of the Labor Department, and suggesting that loosening restrictions on a chemical called BPA would produce side effects no worse than giving women little beards.

It wouldn?t be all that newsworthy if the senators who put quill to paper yesterday were Democrats. But these are Republicans---eight of 'em to be exact, or 40 percent of the GOP's upper-chamber membership---who are going on the record to tell Gov. Paul LePage to get a grip:

[W]e feel compelled to express our discomfort and dismay with the tone and spirit of some of the remarks he has made. Were these isolated incidents, we would bite our collective tongues, because we are all human and make mistakes. But, unfortunately, they are not isolated but frequent. Therefore, we feel we must speak out. [?]
[W]e find ourselves continually diverted, responding to yet another example of our chief executive picking a personal fight not worth fighting. "Government by disrespect" should have no place in Augusta, and when it happens, we should all reject it.

Refreshing. The normal method of GOP damage control is to close ranks and figure out a way---any way---to foist blame on someone else ("Liberals are using ventriloquism to make the governor say crazy stuff!"). That they chose to speak out so publicly tells me that they're worried about tea party tactics tarnishing their brand just as they start getting down to work with their first Senate and House majorities in eons. I'd be pissed, too.

So will Governor LePage listen to his colleagues in the Augusta statehouse and put a stop to his comedy of errors? Well, seeing how the tea party is reacting to yesterday's op-ed piece...

"We put LePage and the Republican majority in office to get this state back on the right track and away from the socialist agenda that we have lived with for MANY years!! Please STOP this gang of 8 before they completely destroy what we have gained!"

?golly, I hope not.

Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]