Monday, August 26, 2013

Booker Prize

Not that I have a horse in the race, but it was fun to watch Steve Lonegan, the Republican nominee for the Senate in New Jersey on “Up with Steve Kornacki,” basically bury his chances of beating Democrat Corey Booker all by himself.

Republican New Jersey Senate candidate Steve Lonegan called federal relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy, the superstorm that devastated the Jersey Shore last October and left thousands of people homeless, “over the top.”

“I disagreed with Governor Christie and President Obama on Hurricane Sandy funding,” he told MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki Saturday. “I thought it was just too much money.” Lonegan said he was concerned that there weren’t enough safeguards to ensure money went to homeowners instead of government programs, saying “There’s all kinds of pork barrel spending in that bill.”

Lonegan, the former mayor of Botoga, New Jersey, also said he would support shutting down the government in order to eliminate funding for the Affordable Care Act.

“Yes. In fact, I think it’s time to draw a line in the sand on the spending problem that’s taking place in this country, this explosion of debt reliance on government,” he said.

Yeah, that should go over really well along the Jersey shore.

Mr. Lonegan offered no proof of the pork barrel spending unless he was talking about places other than New Jersey such as Virginia and Maryland that also got hit by the storm and needed assistance.  He also trotted out all the old Reagan-era cliches about bootstraps and how his sainted mother didn’t need any help from the evil government when she was left widowed.  The only thing he left out was the story of the welfare Cadillac and the T-bones.

And he never answered the age-old question of why someone who hates government so much would want to work for it.

3 barks and woofs on “Booker Prize

  1. Another greedy Republican! I think we should draw a line in the sand against the top 5% who have all the wealth in this country and act for the good of the whole country.

    • Someone please explain to me in terms other than IOKIYAR why it is that the GOTea is convinced that any public spending is “waste, fraud and abuse” – unless it’s public spending on their constituents.

      It would be instructive, after that little display of Lonegan’s, to broadcast a dialogue between himself and Eric Cantor (who’s already on record demanding Sandy funding for VA while insisting that response for NJ/NY is excessive) or [insert random representation from Arizona here, who have all insisted that nothing merits FEMA response except their own wildfires] about which federally-recognized disaster merits public expenditure and which doesn’t.

      • How ’bout tribalism as an explanation? Something along the lines of “my state deserves it but the others don’t”. Also, if other people receive financial assistance, there won’t be enough for my tribe. Power and control are important to RWs. They don’t have power over or control of money going to other “tribes”.

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