The Fish Rots From The Head: Pete Hoekstra, Pat Toomey

Not your parents' Republican Party

Not all Republicans are identical--but they're all so afraid of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, the Club For Growth and the teabagger psychosis that has taken roots in the GOP activist base, that it's virtually meaningless to parse the public differences. Thursday, when the president was in Michigan, a relatively mainstream conservative, gubernatorial candidate Rep. Pete Hoekstra showed up to try to bask in the presidential glow. It didn't work. Obama was speaking at a high tech battery plant that has benefited from stimulus money and he welcomed Hoekstra during his opening remarks. Later whatever pleasured Hoekstra may have felt, was shattered.

"There are some folks who want to go back, who think we should return to the policies that helped to lead to this recession," Obama said later in his comments honoring an advanced car battery factory being built by the company LG Chem. "Some made the political calculation that it's better to obstruct than lend a hand. They said no to the tax cuts, they said no to small-business loans, they said no to clean-energy projects. It doesn't stop them from coming to ribbon-cuttings -- but that's okay."

Hoekstra felt the shoe fit, wore it and called Obama's remarks "unpresidential." The Democrat seeking to replace him in Congress, Fred Johnson, an author and history professor who doesn't always agree with every Obama policy, came to the President's defense. "The President had every reason under the sun to call out Pete Hoekstra. How many times do we have to watch Republicans cut ribbons on projects they opposed before we say something? Pete said it was 'unpresidential'. Well, it's just plain uncaring to oppose job creation-- especially when you're running for Governor of the state with the second highest unemployment in the country. I'm out here in Pete's district, knocking on doors every day, and I can tell you that his constituents want job creation. So, I applaud the President's honesty, and we all need to follow his lead and expose this brand of hypocrisy."

The President was called worse than "unpresidential" by Republicans this week-- and one of most extreme ones anywhere, Pat Toomey, a tawdry Wall Street derivatives trader running against Joe Sestak for the open Pennsylvania Senate seat, did it out loud. Most political observers in Pennsylvania see Toomey as something of a sociopath so few were genuinely shocked when he stepped over the line yesterday and questioned the President's patriotism.

Speaking to an American Legion convention in Harrisburg, the former Congressman said, "there are some in Washington who don't really believe in American exceptional-ism."

He warned the mindset can lead to "very troubling policies" and deference to other countries.

After the event, Toomey said he was talking about President Obama.

"I think if you look at his quotes and how he has responded to questions about this, President Obama is at best very skeptical about the idea about American exceptionalism."

Toomey later clarified American exceptionalism as "the belief the United States' model of freedom and free enterprise is the best one."

Democrat Joe Sestak disagrees, saying, "falsely accusing the Commander-in-Chief of being less than fully patriotic harms the nation's goals."

I don't know Toomey personally but judging from statements like this, there can be little doubt that the far right former head of the Club For Growth would have been very much at home in the Nazi Party had he been born in Germany a century ago. He would be a catastrophe in the U.S. Senate, easily as bad as Sharron Angle, Ken Buck or any of the other radicals from the Jim DeMint fringe of the GOP. We reached Joe Sestak, a former Admiral and the highest ranking military officer serving in Congress. He was very measured in his response:

You can disagree with the President's policies, but there has always been bipartisan belief that the President of the United States holds high America's ideals. Falsely accusing the Commander-in-Chief of being less than fully patriotic harms the nation's goals and prevents a serious debate on the policies we should be pursuing.

It's the radical nature of remarks by supposedly respectable politicians like Toomey, that give permission to the violent race-baiters and bigots to stir up the kinds of divisiveness and tensions the GOP is hoping to use to ride back into power in November.

In his weekly address this morning, the President laid out the case against Republicans, "a partisan minority in the Senate," for obstructing progress. I bet they'll be screaming their heads off all next week. Of course Obama doesn't mention conservative Democrats like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln who also obstruct progress. If you want to change the Senate, the best thing we can do-- personally I favor making it a ceremonial office with no veto power-- please go to the Blue America page Senate Candidates Worth Fighting For, where you'll find men and women like Joe Sestak, Elaine Marshall, and Jack Conway. Meanwhile, this is worth watching: