GOP hypocrisy continues...

Michael at Blog for AZ wrote about this last night, and today I came home from an errand to watch a press conference on CSPAN about this.

It seems that after 12 years of running Congress in a manner that totally disregarded Democrats, the newly-in-the-minority Republicans have been bitten by the "bipartisanship" bug.

With that, they are sponsoring a "Minority Bill of Rights" for the new session of Congress. It's patterned after a similar proposal from Speaker-Designate Nancy Pelosi, then the House Minority Leader.

In the letter announcing this proposal, they talk about the "abusive" ways of the Democrats during their 40 years in the majority prior to 1994.

Of course, there's no mention of the last 12 years.

Acknowledging that their conversion could be genuine, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and watched the press conference with interest.

The benefit of the doubt vanished during the Q&A portion of the conference when the Republican representatives danced around questions of whether they supported the Minority Bill of Rights when it was proposed by Nancy Pelosi or if they would continue to support it if the Republicans regain control of the House in two years.

I have no doubt that the Republicans will be treated with more respect by Speaker-designate Pelosi and her staff than they accorded to Democrats for the last 12 years; the Republicans are still going to whine about how badly they are treated.

...In a separate yet similarly hypocritical statement, President Bush has called for the Democrats in Congress "to set aside politics and look to the future".

Mr. President - what if "looking to the future" means reining you in? What's more important to you? Congress rubberstamping the initiatives that you want, or safeguarding the future of generations of Americans? When there's a conflict between what you want and what the country needs, what should the Democrats in Congress do?

Later!