Oklahoma's severely mentally disturbed conservative Senator James Inhofe Declares War On DeMint-Backed Earmark Ban, Saying Those Who Support It Are ‘Brainwashed’
While much ink has been spilled exploring the civil war between far-right tea party conservatives and more moderate Republicans, there appears to be a new rift emerging among the die-hard conservative wing in the Senate. Echoing the demands of the tea party movement, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) proposed yesterday a ban on earmarks in the Senate, and is aggressively whipping his colleagues to support it. While Republican leaders offered strong rhetoric on the campaign trail about opposing earmarks, now that the GOP has successfully taken power, they have been cool to DeMint’s proposal.Whether earmarks should be completely banned or not is open for sane and rational debate. Inhofe lives in a mental bubble that prevents him from making sane rational arguments. What's wrong with Washington? States such as Oklahoma keep sending mentally deranged do nothing senators like Inhofe back to Washington every year.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — whom National Journal ranked as the most conservative senator in 2009 — has gone even further, declaring “an all-out war within the Senate GOP conference next week to defeat an earmark moratorium.” Inhofe has said he will take to the Senate floor Monday to deliver a “pretty strong statement” against the ban, and to call out DeMint for supporting earmarks before he was against them. DeMint “was really pro-earmark. … He ran as a pro-earmarker” as a House Member in 2004, Inhofe told Roll Call.
In an interview with conservative radio host Ed Morrissey yesterday, Inhofe said people like DeMint who oppose earmarks are “brainwashed,” adding that if his fellow senators vote to ban earmarks they are voting to “trash the constitution and reject their oath of office”:
INHOFE: They’ve been demagoguing this whole thing on earmarks, but you’ll never convince the American people of it because they are so thoroughly brainwashed. You say earmark, they say, oh, earmarks are bad. But then when they stop and define the earmarks, then they think, that is what the Constitution — that is what James Madison said we are supposed to be doing in the House and the Senate.
So my concern is this…these guys will come in and the first vote they will cast is to trash the Constitution and reject their oath of office. I know that sounds extreme, but I don’t want these guys sitting around worrying about whether or not we will not do our job and whether we will cede our power to the president, or not.
