Lindsey Graham Wins Our GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award for Blaming the Republicans' Filibuster Addiction on the Democrats

Lindsey Graham

Welcome back to BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Most of us progressives, frustrated by the stalemates going on in the U.S. Senate, would be quick to blame the situation on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid has easily folded every time the Republicans even say half of the word "filibuster," giving them whatever they want whenever they ask for it. And of course, that's never enough to even get them to vote for it.

But when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suggested it was only because Reid had introduced so much legislation, and opposed so many Republican amendments, that the GOP just had to filibuster a few of them, well, we could hardly believe the hypocrisy.

When he was asked last weekend on Fox News Sunday whether or not the GOP should "own some of this gridlock and some of this lack of bipartisanship," Graham said no to his fair share of blame. From Raw Story (where you can also see the video):

When asked about the GOP's use of the filibuster, Graham said, "Harry Reid put more bills in -- into the hopper and filled up the tree, shedding out Republican amendments [more] than anybody I know of, but we're all in this together."

The senior Senator from South Carolina quickly changed the subject to national security.

Darn skippy he changed the subject; he could probably tell how totally ridiculous he sounded! Raw Story goes on to note the following bits of reality, contradicting Graham's wild claims:

Republicans used the filibuster 112 times in the 110th Congress. The filibuster was used 54 times in the 109th Congress.

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) called the use of filibusters "unprecedented" when they reached 100. "The Republicans' whole political strategy is for this President and for this Congress to fail," he said on ABC last month.

"All our Republican colleagues have said is no," he went on to say. "They have used the filibuster, a procedure in the Senate to stop progress, 101 times, unprecedented in the history of the United States Senate!"

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said later that same week that Democrats would be on trial for treason if they employed Republican tactics.

Yeah, clearly this is all Reid's fault. How dare he offer all those bills? You'd think he was trying to make laws or something. What a presumptive little snot he is.

And as for "shedding out Republican amendments," that's also far from true. In an as-yet incomplete review of the amendments in the healthcare bill, Slate.com analyzed 197 amendments that were passed in the end. Thirty-six were from Democrats and a whopping 161 were from Republicans.

On top of that, Republicans have been known to basically filibuster themselves during this record-breaking session. Republican Sen. Mike Enzi refused to allow approval of 64 Republican amendments in an attempt to obstruct the process in the HELP Committee's healthcare bill markup, even though Chairman Chris Dodd was ready to accept every one of them.

To hell with it, though. Just filibuster it all, Lindsey! You'll never have to stand up and account for your obstructionism. At least not with Reid as majority leader...

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.

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This is Lindsey Graham's second GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award; he also won on Feb. 20, 2009. You can see a list of all previous winners here.