UPDATED: Another "Shays Moment" (Or Four)

by: tparty

Thu Oct 25, 2007 at 14:03:48 PM EDT

Anyone watching C-SPAN today? I haven't had time to catch any of Sec. of State Rice's testimony in front of the Oversight Committee, but apparently Chris Shays is hard at work proving his Oversight Praise Committee credentials (and embarrassing his constituents) yet again:

GottaLaff from Cliff Schecter's blog:

Christopher Shays (R-CT) was so sputtering mad that he lapsed into poor English: 

"I can't think of hardly anything that the Democrats have done [to try to win this war]!"

He said that twice....

It also "blows him away" that Condi has to come before Congress to examine the question of whether the Iraqi government is corrupt.

More:

At the Iraqi corruption hearings on CSPAN3, this was said:

Condi Rice:  ...Iraqi passed a budget.

Chris Shays:  As we haven't done here yet.

I can't think of hardly anything more impressive than that, Chris. Iraqi's far superior government can sure teach us a thing or two about efficiency.

Marcy Wheeler:

The Republicans (Davis and especially Chris Shays) now attack Waxman for accusing Maliki of corruption. It gets so bad that Condi has to take a step back and note that she is worried about corruption (this could get embarrassing if the Administration ever decides to throw over Maliki based on allegations of corruption).

And some more reports in this Daily Kos liveblog.

Yep, them there's some great "oversight."

Video soon, hopefully. (Up.---Scarce)

Update: Tim Grieve of Salon has one exact quote:

In a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today, Republican Rep. Chris Shays told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he "can't think of hardly anything this new Congress, my Democratic colleagues, have done to help our soldiers win in Iraq and allow them to come home, succeeding rather than failing to help the Iraqi people live in a safe and free Iraq, free from terrorism, free from foreign intervention."

"I frankly can't think of hardly anything," he repeated.

In this case, Shays - allegedly one of the more reasonable "moderates" in the GOP caucus - thinks Dems haven't been helping the troops at all. How many Bush administration funding requests have the Democrats in Congress turned down? None. How many policy requests regarding the war have the Dems rejected? None.

But therein lies the rub: it doesn't matter. Dems imagine all the nasty attack ads the Republicans will run against them next year on military matters and national security policy, so they cave before anyone calls them "weak" or insufficiently supportive of the troops. And then they're called "weak" and insufficiently supportive of the troops anyway.

"I have served on this committee for 20 years. And everything this committee has done since we've gone into Iraq - and this last year in particular - has been to try to point out everything bad that is going on."