So I was driving across town the other day, and there on
I-10 was a billboard that saluted the former U.S. Senator from Arizona Jon Kyl
for his “service on behalf of the American people.”
I wonder what was on the mind of those who paid for the
billboard, because it certainly couldn’t be Kyl’s record as a legislator. He
neither sponsored nor introduced any significant legislation during his eight
years in the House of Representatives, or his 18 years in the Senate. He was,
at best, a republican hack whose main skill, Time Magazine once noted, was
“legislative subterfuge.”
Let’s be honest: Kyl left office in disgrace, and as a stain
on both Arizona and the United States Senate. During his final four years in
office he served as an unindicted, co-conspirator in an act of treason against
the People of the United States. You read that right: Kyl is a traitor.
But he wasn't alone. Kyl was one of 13 republicans invited by right wing poll
troll and lie master Frank Luntz to a dinner at the Caucus Room restaurant the
night America celebrated the first inauguration of President Barak Obama in
2008. The names and photos of the invitees should be posted in the Most Wanted
section of every Post Office in America, and includes such notable white collar
criminals as Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn and Newt Gingrich. The
only thing this group hated more than the American people was that the American
people rejected the foundation of everything they stood for by elevating Barack
Obama to the presidency in a landslide.
The one and only intent of the dinner was to plot ways to
block the newly-elected President’s agenda, even if the measures he proposed
would improve the American economy, and in turn the lives of all Americans. Differences
of opinion, philosophy and approach are all part of politics. But what Kyl and
his band of co-conspirators charted was a callous and calculated coup meant to
serve only the needs of their party — a party whose fundamental tenents were rejected convincingly by a vast
majority of Americans just two months before. It is not an overstatement to call it a coup, and it was
designed to bring our system of government to a halt. It was subversion
by a disgruntled minority to impose their will on a country that had just
soundly rejected every principal espoused by the republican party. It was, in
every sense, a plot by traitors.
And to a large degree, it worked. The agreement reached that
evening lead to absolute gridlock in the House, and in the Senate to more filibusters in the last four year than in the entire history of the Republic.
Any sense of governance came to a complete stop, including things as routine as
the approval of federal judges and agency directors. It was slimy. It was
petty. It was traitorous. And Kyl was up to his elbows in it.
Let’s not forget that the economic collapse of this country
— wholly owned by republicans by their own irresponsible spending, the Bush tax
cuts, two wars rung up on a credit card and deregulation that was both massive
and reckless — was one of the reasons President Obama was swept into office in
2008. But rather than own and accept responsibility for the failure of their policies,
Kyl and his dozen accomplices plotted not just against the President’s agenda,
but against the welfare American people. By any definition, that’s treason.
President Obama’s re-election landslide was the final blow
to a failed coup. But if there was truly justice in this nation, Kyl and
cohorts would be stripped of their rights of citizenship and left to wither away
for the remainder of their lives in prison.
