So this committee wasn't right-wing enough with Kyl, Cornyn, and Sessions on it? Frist had to add Brownback and Coburn. While it's true that these men are replacing two other far-far-right senators (Craig and Chambliss) these two ... yikes. Brownback is the smoother of the two, but he simply loves governmental regulation of all kinds of things that are in line with the agenda of what's often called the "Christian Right". He's been the lead guy in the Senate on issues like cloning bans, and I imagined every medical researcher in the country is (or should be) shuddering today. Remember that he came into the Senate by soundly defeating another Kansas Republican (Sheila Frahm, appointed to replace Bob Dole) who apparently just wasn't conservative enough. And he's long been rumored to have presidential ambitions, so who knows what he'll get up to on this high-profile panel.
As to Tom Coburn - the man who wants to execute abortion providers and thinks that gays are the biggest threat facing the country will now have a lead role in writing the country's laws and picking its judges ... ugh.
It should be noted Frist likely saved himself some headaches by putting Coburn on this non-money panel. Coburn's great strength in my eyes is that he's fed up with pork spending, huge deficits and certain corporate giveaways. Since the Republicans are all about those things at the moment it makes sense that they wouldn't want him on a committee in which he could challenge big-government and big-deficit economic policies.
Posted by armand at December 21, 2004 12:09 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics