Posted on 06/17/2010 4:36:15 PM PDT by tobyhill
Under pressure from Republican leaders who threatened to remove him from a ranking committee position, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) late Thursday retracted his apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the way his company has been treated by the U.S. government -- a comment that had drawn heavy criticism from both parties.
Barton made that apology to Hayward in his opening statement Thursday morning before Hayward's testimony to the House subcommittee, in which Barton decried the Obama administration for pressuring BP to open a $20 billion escrow account and to suspend dividend payments for the rest of the year.
The ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee said such arrangements have no legal basis, and that the political pressure exerted on the corporation in the midst of an investigation is a "tragedy of the first proportion."
"I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Barton said in the morning. "I apologize."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
When are the GOP gonna stand toe to toe and scrap for their country instead of employing the “smart, disciplined politics” of a permanent minority?
Barton’s words, he apologized for an American President behaving like a 3rd worlder, he did not apologize for PB’s spill.
[Barton] complained that “the attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the interests of the American people, [is] participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that’s unprecedented in our nation’s history, that’s got no legal standing, and which sets, I think, a terrible precedent for the future.”
“I apologize,” Barton added. “I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is — again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize.”
“I’m speaking now totally for myself,” he noted. “I’m not speaking for the Republican Party.”
Long,long, long after hell freezes over.
I agree, it wasn’t phrased good but he was right on the point, it was a shakedown.
The GOP is falling into obama and the rats’ trap of demonizing and putting ALL the blame on BP to deflect it from their chosen one.
I don’t believe I can force myself to vote for another republican. There are none in my area that have any balls. They’re all cashing in and don’t want to upset the apple cart.
Barton would have gotten a lot more support if he’d stuck to his guns, gone out and held a press conference and say “My party leadership just attempted to shake me down by threatening to take away my chairmanships. I told them to go to hell.” Then the party leaders would have gotten the damned message a little louder and a little clearer.
Proof-positive a vote for the GOP is just more of the same...WE NEED TO THROW ALL OF THEM OUT!!!
Time to start over!
Barton should have told the Republican ‘leaders’ to shove it! I know I would like to tell them that!
Anybody know the fax numbers for Barton, Cantor, and Boehner?
“smart, disciplined politics” of a permanent minority?
And this is how tone-deaf Republicans have become.
First I have heard of this. It pi$$es me off. I used to understand what happens in politcs. No more
If the entire MSM were replaced with Rush Limbaugh clones except for one last reporter, the GOP leadership would still play to that last Dem reporter’s demands and expectations.
Mark Levin ripped them both, and said if we take back the house, they should not be in charge or there will be a third party.
“I don’t need to explain why it’s time to ditch the GOP because if you don’t see it by now then you never will. Nothing is going to change with the GOP.”
Here we are back to logic, or lack of same. The Democrat party would become even stronger in such a case and the country would be permanently lost, as I believe you currently are.
“Anybody know the fax numbers for Barton, Cantor, and Boehner?”
All things are known by google.
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