This weekend the surrogates were out in full force for both candidates but the tone of both sides couldn't be more different. House Minority Leader John Boehner for example, talked about Obama's "present" votes in the Illinois Legislature, calling him "chickenshit" for not voting yes or no on certain legislation. Of course, with anything Republicans use to attack their opponents across the aisle, there is a certain level of another animal's excrement and a layer of hypocrisy on top of it.
From Yahoo News:
While campaigning for Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Wednesday, Boehner told a small crowd at a bar in the college town of Oxford that failing to vote "yes" or "no" on an issue meant a lawmaker was a "chickens---."
The Ohio congressman said the last thing the country needs is to have a "chicken" in the White House.[...]
In the Illinois General Assembly, "present" votes are common and used for far more than avoiding a difficult choice. At times lawmakers vote "present" when they have a conflict of interest. In other cases, they do it to register opposition to a procedural decision or to signal that they support a bill's goal but feel the legislation is flawed.
In Obama's case, the 129 "present" votes amounted to about 3.5 percent of the votes he cast in nearly eight years as a state senator.
During his talk, Boehner also disparaged Obama's work as a community organizer.
"This guy was a community organizer for 20 years," Boehner said. "If somebody can tell me what a community organizer is, maybe I can understand it better."
I'd love for Boehner to say that to the face of a community organizer but I'm guessing he is too much of a coward. The truth is, community organizers do an incredible amount of hard work for our nation and for Republicans to use this as a campaign attack is sickening to organizers in both parties.
Now back to the issue of legislative voting. Boehner goes after Obama for the "present" votes that make up 3.5 percent, but it is Boehner who has missed more than five percent of all his votes in Congress since 1991 (and don't even get me started on McCain's voting habits recently). And then there are the votes he did show up for such as hate crimes legislation, but the ignorance and bigotry they rest on isn't out of courage, but cowardly political expediency.
Talk about a chickenshit legislator!
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