Mapping the hissy fits
If it wasn’t for bad faith, they wouldn’t have no faith at all (with apologies to Albert King).
For those who missed MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight” on Friday, guest George Conway, attorney and former Republican, presented a hand-drawn “GOP Hunter Biden Flow Chart” that made a mockery of the prolonged right-wing hissy fit Republicans keep throwing over President Biden’s son Hunter’s legal troubles.
CliffNotes version: Heads, right-wing hissy fit. Tails, right-wing hissy fit.
Obviously, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee missed the show. Or she didn’t and the joke went over her head (not hard). On Friday evening and Saturday morning, Blackburn responded to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment Friday of U.S. Attorney David Weiss as Special Counsel for the ongoing investigation and prosecutions referenced and described in United States v. Robert Hunter Biden.
Blackburn’s Xitter posts perfectly encapsulated the bad faith running through the veins of today’s Republican Party like the arrows of Conway’s flow chart. The appointment of Weiss, Blackburn charged, was a ploy by Garland to deep-six the Hunter Biden investigation and “an attempt to cover up the Biden family corruption.”
Perhaps Blackburn, 71, is having memory issues and cannot remember her actions from as recently as September. Perhaps she expects the public’s memory is even shorter and we cannot. Or perhaps what she did last year was as much bad faith then is it is bad faith now.
Last September, Blackburn joined 32 other Republicans (by my count) in demanding that Garland appoint a special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation. They named their preferred candidate: David Weiss.
“The level of brazen, demonstrable gaslighting from this GOP is beyond belief,” MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan responded. It is also Standard Operating Procedure.
As Digby is fond of saying, shamelessness is their superpower.
UPDATE: My apologies for missing Ron. Johnson’s toeing the same line as Blackburn.