Don’t Blame Bunning
Bunning’s action was a sideshow, a boneheaded symbolic gesture that backfired with slight consequences. Yet the senator was made to look the dangerous fool in media accounts while many of those who enabled the financial catastrophe continue to be treated as reasonable experts after being rewarded for their folly with the highest posts in both the Bush and Obama administrations.
Robert Scheer, TruthDig.com
Senate Banking Committee member Jim Bunning, R-Ky., gestures during a 2009 committee hearing. AP / Harry Hamburg
How convenient that seemingly everyone in the liberal blogosphere, and even at many points to the right, got to use Jim Bunning as a scapegoat. The venom of the attacks suggests that the maverick Republican senator from Kentucky provided a welcome alternative to the real villains: bankers much closer to the centers of power. As if Bunning’s denial of unanimous consent to a stopgap extension of unemployment insurance—easily overcome, as was demonstrated Tuesday night—is at the root of our economic crisis.
It isn’t, and it is vicious nonsense to transform Bunning, who has a long record of opposition to the bipartisan policies that caused America’s financial mess, into a poster boy for economic heartlessness. The issue was not one of extending aid for another month to those whose benefits had run out but rather holding the government accountable for the means of payment.
Related:
Jon Stewart On Bunning: Just Tell Him There Are 'Free Smoothies For Crazy People In The Lobby' To Get Him Out Of The Room, Jillian Rayfield, Talking Points Memo
Jon Stewart has some advice for Senate Democrats trying to overcome Sen. Jim Bunning's filibuster: Get him out of the room by announcing "free smoothies for crazy people in the lobby."
