The Heartless GOP Seven Senators holding up a vital AIDS bill that would save lives -- BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week

THE BUZZFLASH GOP HYPOCRITE OF THE WEEK

http://gophypocrites.com/2008/05/hyp08020.html

The Heartless GOP Seven

Welcome back to the Buzzflash GOP Hypocrite of the Week, in fact all seven of them.

That's right: seven Republican senators -- Tom Coburn (OK), Jim DeMint (SC), Jeff Sessions (AL), Saxby Chambliss (GA), David Vitter (LA), Jim Bunning (KY), and Richard Burr (NC) -- are holding up a vital AIDS bill that would save the lives of countless children and adults in Africa.

According to The Washington Post's Michael Gerson:

You'd think that a few million of these wasting bodies would weigh more on the moral balance than seven senators. But so far, you'd be wrong.

It is the nature of the Senate that the smallest of minorities can impede the work of the majority. But it takes a conscious choice -- an act of tremendous will and pride -- for members to employ these powers against an AIDS bill with overwhelming bipartisan support.

The seven, led by Coburn, complain that the reauthorization is too costly. They object to "mission creep" -- the funding of "food, water, treatment of other infectious diseases, gender empowerment programs, poverty alleviation programs" -- as though people surviving on AIDS treatment do not need to eat, work or get their TB treated. And the senators are concerned that AIDS funds might be used for things such as abortion referrals and needle distribution, though the legislation doesn't mention these possibilities. So they are pushing for the extension of a superfluous spending mandate requiring that at least 55 percent of PEPFAR resources be used for treatment, on the theory that this will starve "feckless or morally dubious" prevention programs.

In short, lives are being lost because of the same old extremist "moral" posturing on the part of sanctimonious GOP prigs. Lives hang in the balance of their tired-old pandering to the Bible Belt.

As Gerson sagely notes, "Each of the Coburn Seven counts himself pro-life. If a bill came to the Senate floor that would save millions of unborn children, one assumes that pro-life members would push to improve it, accept a few necessary compromises and then enthusiastically support the legislation."

Yes, indeed, every Republican senator is pro-life except when they are regularly anti-life. It's a paradox that only God can apparently resolve, but he or she is clearly not communicating with these extremists who willingly let people die.

Of course, if these were blonde white kids in Oklahoma -- where Coburn hails from -- it would be a different matter, wouldn't it?

For this reason and many more about being so selectively pro-life, we present this week's BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite Award to "The Coburn Seven."

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.

THE BUZZFLASH GOP HYPOCRITE OF THE WEEK

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