Now Watch This Drive
by digby
Republicans really are shameless. Howie at Down With Tyranny caught a beaut:
One of the anti-Obama right wing e-mailing circles sent out another of their endless attacks on the president, this time because he played some golf this week. They acknowledged it’s a “relaxing game, and a game for all ages” but they went for the jugular: “Do you think it’s appropriate to play golf while lives are being ruined, economies destroyed, and the environment damaged beyond repair? Then congratulations– you are an Obama-level golf fanatic.”
An Obama-level golf fanatic? What would that make John Boehner, who spent one out of three days last year on the links? And they’re bitching because Obama played ten times! Boehner managed to crawl out of his tanning booth 119 times! Then they attacked Obama because the First lady went down to the Gulf. “He has focused on everything but the challenges facing the Gulf, and avoided assuming the responsibilities of his office. Bold new leadership? Hardly.”
Had enough? Then tell us: since the beginning of the Gulf crisis, which of President Obama’s actions have left you furious? You can use our simple widget at GOP.com to let the world know that the President’s refusal to do his job is unacceptable. FORE!
Can you believe the gall?
Last year Jake Sherman at Politico did a little digging into Boehner’s golfing shenanigans. Boehner’s PAC spent over 80 grand on golfing outings in the first half of the year. “And the minority leader,” Sherman wrote, “doesn’t hold his events at worn-out municipal courses. The most recent outing was a $20,921.34 event at the plush Robert Trent Jones track in Gainesville, Va., an invitation-only private club that was once also home to the Professional Golfers Association’s President’s Cup.”
The Republicans are so obtuse that they are actually running a campaign criticizing Obama for being a golfer, when their own House Minority leader spends more time on the golf course than Tiger Woods. It virtually defines the word hubris.
They can’t get away with that…
Blue America has endorsed a great candidate who is running against Boehner, Justin Coussoule, and in the course of various conversations about his race were intrigued by suggestions from Congressmen Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Alan Grayson (D-FL) to put a golfing billboard up in Boehner’s district to remind his constituents of how hard he’s working for them. So, this weekend we’re kicking off a little “contest.”
Howie has details:
Boehner would probably be more likely to see one of these billboards if we put it up around Florida where he spends most of his time golfing but it’s really more for his constituents than for him anyway. We decided to place it just outside Boehner’s gated community in Wetherington on I-75, a couple miles from Touchdown Jesus. If you prefer one particular billboard design, please donate to our fund to get it up in Butler County by clicking on the image you like best. We’ll choose the billboard design that gets the most “votes”– a vote being defined as a contribution, regardless of amount. (In other words, whether you give $1.00 or $100, it’s one vote.)
Each billboard is a live link to its respective fundraising page. Click on the one you like best and vote for it.
(I’m partial to the last one myself. But then my sense of humor comes directly from MAD magazine.)
The Party establishment obviously doesn’t want to break the non-existent rules of House comity and ruffle Boehner’s feathers (even though Republicans have no problem portraying Speaker Pelosi as the Wicked Witch of the West Coast) so Howie started working the phones and when he told our friends at the AFL-CIO and People For the American Way Voters Alliance about our plan they were eager to join up. Each is offering to match whatever you donate on. So… just click on the billboard (or billboards) you like best, and if you give $1, the billboard fund gets $3 and if you give $10 the billboard fund winds up with $30. How’s that for a deal?
Nobody’s going to do this stuff if we don’t do it. And there are allies out there who are willing to pitch in and help. We hope that Coussoule can stage an upset and defeat Boehner this fall. The district is trending Democratic so it’s not completely out of the question. And regardless of the outcome, we think it’s very worthwhile to remind the people Boehner supposedly represents just what it is he does with all his time. Never say he doesn’t do anything. A man doesn’t get a tan like that without working at it.
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