So Many Republican Hypocrites, So Little Time

October 5, 2007 | SEND TO A FRIEND | GET EARLY NOTICE OF THE HOTW

Saxby Chambliss

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Okay, we're not naming Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia a hypocrite for this quotation from awhile back he uttered in the Senate Armed Services Committee: "We need better intelligence. If we had better intelligence in the Civil War we'd be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln."

Since the Republican subtext for its campaigns over the past 40 years has been race, it's not surprising to hear a Georgia cracker in the Senate yearn -- Trent Lott style -- for the days of the Confederacy.

But what makes Chambliss this week's GOP Hypocrite extraordinaire is his indignant vote to condemn MoveOn.org for calling a military shill for the failed Bushevik War, General Betrayus.

It's shameful that Saxby would summon such outrage when he got out of Vietnam by claiming a football injury after receiving a law school deferment. (The one most common characteristic of Republican "Alpha Male" wannabees of a certain age in the GOP is that they almost all found a way to avoid service in Vietnam while claiming to "support our troops.")

But what makes the Chambliss vote so outrageously indigestible is that the Chickenhawk spent his 2002 Senate campaign against Max Cleland attacking the war record and military loyalty of a severely wounded military hero. His campaign even ran ads pairing Cleland with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Then the right-wing echo chamber, orchestrated as always in their slander, started circulating the accusation that Cleland didn't become a triple-amputee out of heroism in Vietnam. Instead they claimed that he was drunk and fell on a grenade!

Does it get any more despicable? These cretins have forfeited their human souls. They are just pigs slopping around in a trough of evil.

Meanwhile, when he was a Congressman, Chambliss did the George W. Bush photo-op thing and regularly toured military bases in Georgia, dressing up in uniforms whenever he could, even though he twice successfully sought deferments from serving in the military and being sent to Vietnam.

Of course, when Rush Limbaugh (who got out of service in Vietnam by claiming that he had an anal cyst, we kid you not) called some anti-war GIs "phony soldiers," we didn't hear a word of disapproval from Saxby Chambliss. GOP Chickenhawks need to stick together, we guess -- birds of a feather style, so to speak.

Saxby Chambliss may be a Senator, but he's no man of integrity.

He's just a loathsome BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week who should be sent to the front lines of Iraq, and then court-martialed for his inevitable cowardly desertion.

Until next week, remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.