Cornyn says he “shares [Barton’s] concerns.”
What actually has me curious is when this gets back around to the House Republican Study Committee, which is essentially the right-wing or Movement conservative caucus within the House GOP, and a very big deal. Everybody’s reacting to Barton’s statement. But the HRS put out a pretty much identical statement yesterday about the Escrow account and President Obama yesterday. And more than a hundred members of the House Republican caucus belong to that group.
That makes it much more of a Republican position than what Barton said.
Eeesh, Florida Republican Rep. asks Barton to step down as top GOPer on the Energy Committee after “apology” and “tragedy” comments.
Barton issues non-apology apology.
Hmmm. Seems like there’s also now a written apology which goes further, perhaps into real apology territory. More shortly.
Apologizing to the CEO of BP for the president getting BP to pay for damages to the Gulf.
Who could have imagined it would turn out so badly?
Sodexo has what is apparently a very wasteful, Rumsfeld-era contract to run the mess halls for the Marine Corps. And they’ve enlisted Dick Gephardt, now a lobbyist, to help them hold on to the deal.
Barton’s second try at apologizing, retracting for his comments this morning. Here’s his written retraction.
On the one hand — and actually on several hands — I find it almost preposterous to think that Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) would be forced to give up his committee post over his apology/tragedy comments this morning — notwithstanding one GOP Rep.’s call for him to do just that. That’s just not how the GOP caucus functions. But I actually think there’s some reason to wonder whether he’ll be able to hold on to his seat as ranking member (senior Republican and Chairman-in-waiting) of the Energy Committee through the Fall.
The big enchilada this Fall is the House. And a big part of the equation will be the degree to which Democrats are able to raise fears of a return to Republican rule that are strong enough to blunt the strong anti-incumbent tide. And in this case, the ads just write themselves:
“If “candidate X” wins the man in charge of Energy policy in Washington will be Joe Barton, the guy who actually (incredulous and contemptuously inflection on ‘actually’) apologized to BP for making them pay to clean up the Gulf Coast.”
It’s not something the election is going to turn on. But it’s a nice tag line for a lot of Democratic incumbents’ commercials this fall.
Late Update: Maybe sooner than I realized? From Greg Sargent … Read More
You may have just heard about Rep. Barton (R-TX) when he came up with the great idea of apologizing to BP for President Obama asking them to pay to fix the Gulf coast. But actually he comes up with something like this every few months or so. Remember, he was the guy last year who convinced himself that he’d “baffled the Energy Sec [Steven Chu] with basic question — Where does oil come from.” Or the time he said the answer to global warming was to find some shade.
So in honor of the day we’ve put together a list of top Barton video moments from the last year. Feast your eyes.