Canadian Cynic

More Republican hypocrisy: part 47128

There's really no end to the jaw-dropping, mind-numbing hypocrisy wafting out of the Republican tent these days. Here's the latest example. To make a long story short, while a Kerry presidential victory would be a good thing for the U.S., it would be a bad thing for Massachusetts, for which Kerry is a United States senator. If Kerry won, that would create a Senate vacancy in that state which, historically, would have been filled by the state's governor, Mitt Romney, who is a Republican and would undoubtedly appoint a Republican to replace the departing Democrat. Ouch. In effect, a Democratic presidential victory would cost the Democrats a seat in the Senate, a fairly high price to pay, at least until the next election cycle.

Or, at least, it would have been a high price, if not for the fact that the Massachussetts Democrats, having seen this coming and, being a sizable majority in that state's legislature, took charge this summer and passed legislation that took the appointment power away from the governor and replaced it with a special election, which makes it extremely likely that another Democrat would end up in that seat. Problem solved.

The hilarious part of this is the hypocritical, sputtering outrage on the part of Republicans, who were not amused:

"It was disappointing to see the Democrats in Massachusetts respond in such a partisan fashion to the mere prospect of a Kerry presidency by passing legislation that shortchanges the voters," said Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney's communication director.

Oh, yeah, that partisan, shortchanging the voter thing. Man, that really sucks. Kind of like the way the Texas state Republicans pushed through a redistricting plan to hand themselves several more seats. Or the way they tried to do the same thing in Colorado.

Yeah, Eric, ramming through voter-shortchanging, blatantly partisan legislation really does suck. Well, at least when you're not doing it, eh?