Americans, Not Stupid, Fault GOP on Disaster Relief

Americans, Not Stupid, Blame the GOP for Disaster Relief Foul-Up

Thursday June 12th, 1997 -- I was waiting to see how long pollsters waited before releasing the obvious -- Americans know that Republicans are responsible for the gridlock over flood disaster relief for the Mid-West.

How simply stupid can Republicans be? They submit a disaster relief bill to the White House with two totally unrelated provisions attached:

The first would avoid future government shutdowns by freezing spending at the prior year's levels, in the event of a budget stalemate;
The second bars the Census Bureau from using sampling methods that might give Democrats a boost.

Both riders are absolutely political. The anti-shutdown provision seeks to stop something that the GOP started when it closed down the government twice and earned the ire of the American people. Now Republicans think they can turn the tables on President Clinton and pretend they are trying to solve the problem they created in the first place. It's also a dumb idea in that it would allow the government to go on without an adopted and presidentially-signed budget bill.

Thanks to CNN Interactive for this!

According to CNN, "About 55 percent of those polled in a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey faulted congressional Republicans for the hold-up in passing a disaster relief bill to aid the flood-ravaged Northern Plains states. Some 25 percent of the 651 adult Americans contacted by phone on Tuesday blamed President Bill Clinton. Asked how closely they were following the story, 53 percent answered 'some' or a 'great deal,' while 46 percent said 'not much.' The poll's sampling error was +/- 4 percent."

One has to wonder just how inane Republican strategists really are. This is not the first time, or even the tenth, that the GOP leadership has put their own party under the hot lights of social criticism. The idea that attaching a shopping list -- albeit a small one -- to a bill designed to aid flood-ravaged families must have been cooked up by Rasputin.

Now Republicans are re-grouping and word has it that House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott could have their collective heads handed to them by disgruntled colleagues over this latest in a string of mismanaged maneuvers. House and Senate Republicans are already weeping about their lack of real leadership, and talk of dumping Lott is on the rise. Mr. Gingrich has never been able to raise himself from the muck and is seen to be living on a short wire.

Americans are again seeing that Republicans think the nation can be run like a business without regard to human suffering. As usual, GOP leaders just don't get it. Like "New Democrats," they take their clues from business. What they haven't remembered is that the reasons the country was founded in the first place had little to do with the bottom line.

Voters in the Republican midwestern stronghold will remind them in future years.