Posted on 04/22/2010 5:46:11 PM PDT by MissesBush
WASHINGTON (April 22) -- House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said today that he regretted calling vocal opponents of health care reform "un-American" but compared the angry rhetoric of some Republican leaders who goad them on to the fiery rantings of a controversial Depression-era priest sympathetic to the Nazis.
"That was not a good phrase, not a good use of language. It was not correct," the Maryland Democrat said of an op-ed column he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in USA Today last summer. The article was a response to protesters who disrupted town hall meetings on their party's health care reform proposals, hanging members of Congress in effigy and railing against "death panels."
Hoyer told reporters that while "there are some activities that are not consistent with civil engagement," he said he regretted having read the column too quickly before approving it.
Brendan Hoffman, Getty Images House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is apologizing for a column he co-wrote in which he said, "Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American." The outspoken majority leader was unapologetic about the "progress, not success" that President Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress has made to slow and start reversing the Great Recession that began in the final months of the Bush administration. But he acknowledged the public mood amid stubbornly high unemployment and foreclosures.
"People are angry about it who believe it was beyond their control and they have been put in a position by people who have power, whether they're bankers, politicians," he said, noting that with George W. Bush off the scene, many are focused on blaming Obama.
"It is not unusual. Father Coughlin came about during the Depression," he said, referring to the anti-Semitic radio commentator who used his weekly broadcasts to attack President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal policies. "But Father Coughlin didn't have the e-mail. He didn't have blogs. He didn't have Twitter. He didn't have Fox News to promote the most confrontational, least-helpful dialogue and demagoguery that we are confronting the American people with, and I think that's not useful. I think we are losing the civility of our debate."
Hoyer also reiterated his criticism of rhetoric like that used by Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin at a rally in Minneapolis in which they called Democrats a "lying, thieving ... bunch of commies."
Those words, he said, were "not very helpful and certainly incites people to great anger and confrontation, and I would suggest to you not very useful in terms of thoughtful analysis of how we get to where we want to get."
Steny is still a douchebag.
Translation=the Tea Party people are scaring the heck out of people up for election this year.
It occurs to me that the article said the remark was from last summer but someone now is only getting around to calling Hoyer on it?
Fr. Coughlin was a progressive by any definition of the term.
His criticism of FDR was that Roosevelt didn’t go nearly far enough.
Hoyer also reiterated his criticism of rhetoric like that used by Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin at a rally in Minneapolis in which they called Democrats a “lying, thieving ... bunch of commies.”
Those words, he said, were “not very helpful and certainly incites people to great anger and confrontation, and I would suggest to you that only a few of us are liars and
thieves...”
The demonRat party today couldn't possibly be any more unAmerican than they are. And they know it.
I don’t think it make any difference what this jack-ass says. Dems are socialist/fascist and cannot hide it. The slow-learners of America now believe it.
Hoyer.. Maryland’s shame!!!!
Charles Lollar for Congress.. help defeat Hoyer !!!
http://www.lollarforcongress.com/index.php/home
Okay, so after they do backroom deals and shove this nonsense down our throats, even though we begged them not to, he says he is sorry. Riiiiiigggghhhhhtttt!!!
But, of course, those dissenting are still dangerous. Lying, thieving, bribing congressmen though are just sweet innocents.
Where in hell did he ever get a stupid name like “Steny”?
If a Democrats lips move...They’re lieing!
They are a “lying, thieving ... bunch of commies”.
BEGGED!
We don’t beg to our public servants!
They beg us for votes!
I have no problem calling anyone who supported HCR un-American.
Another liar.
Just like a common criminal, crying in the back seat of a patrol car, C.O.P.S. TV-crew film running.
This tells me that the Tea Party is a force to be reckoned with in PG County.
Hey Steny! Two letters: F & U.
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