Dana Milbank reminds us of Kyl’s greatest hits:
In the days following Hurricane Katrina, the nation was reeling over the death and destruction in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. But Kyl, now the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, saw opportunity: According to a voice-mail recording left at the time by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Kyl and Sessions were hoping to find a business owner killed in the storm so they could use that in their campaign to repeal the estate tax.
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It was vintage Kyl: cold and ruthless.
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So when the Arizonan was named as one of six Republicans on the debt supercommittee, Democrats feared the worst — and they got what they feared. It exaggerates little to say that Kyl thwarted agreement almost singlehandedly. While some Republicans on the panel — notably Reps. Dave Camp and Fred Upton — were, with House Speaker John Boehner’s blessing, prepared to strike a deal, Kyl rallied resistance with his usual table-pounding tirades…
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Norquist, who worked to defeat a compromise, brags about his control over Kyl. When Kyl made remarks in May that appeared to leave open the possibility of tax increases, Norquist called Kyl and adopted “the tone of a teacher scolding a second grader as he recalled the conversation,” Politico reported. Norquist boasted to the publication that, after he upbraided Kyl, the senator “went down on the floor and he gave a colloquy about how we’re against any tax increases of any sort. Boom!”
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Kyl had demonstrated his distaste for negotiation before. In June, he joined House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) in walking out of budget talks with Vice President Biden. He had also displayed his disdain for fellow Republicans who were willing to negotiate. During the health-care debate, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was negotiating with Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, Kyl went on TV and said Grassley “has been given no authority to negotiate anything.” Amid hints that GOP leaders might punish Grassley by denying him the top Republican slot on the Judiciary Committee, Grassley reportedly told colleagues: “Maybe I should just go home and ride my tractor.”
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“Walking napalm” is how one Democratic aide involved in the supercommittee described Kyl this week. And if the senator makes some mistakes as he burns down the village — well, that’s just a cost of doing business. Earlier this year, when Kyl was leading an effort to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood, he claimed on the Senate floor that abortion is “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” The actual number is 3 percent. An aide to Kyl explained: “His remark was not intended to be a factual statement.”
Senator Kyl — Norquist’s bitch and Cantor’s mentor. I’m sure there’s an element of “blame that GOPer over there, the one who’s leaving anyway, not the party as a whole” in play here, but stay on topic. Kyl was a mean, lying lobbyist before he started his nationwide career as a mean prick in the House in 1987 and then ascended to Senator Mean Prick in 1994. Anybody mouthing pap about a newborn decline in legislative “civility”, or the tawdry behavior of today’s GOP leaders as opposed to the mythical statesmen of an earlier golden age, should be reminded that Jon Kyl has been a notorious disgrace to the American congressional system for at least a generation.
Zagloba
If only there were pragmatic Mountain-West Republicans like there are pragmatic Mountain-West Democrats.
That’s it: I’m going to start collecting pledges from office-holders to vote against filibusters. Always, everywhere, no-thought-needed, Grover Norquist-style. And I will be collecting and shrinking heads of those who oppose me.
piratedan
and Arizona is likely to replace him with a Flake (Jeff Flake). Flake is smarter than the majority of the Republican Congressional team in that he doesn’t make himself an ass in public on a regular basis which will give him a leg up on the 2012 election. Just getting that rat bastard Kyl out of office will be an improvement as he’s been able to get away with a lot more damage since everyone focuses on Senator McGrumpy, who provides cover for him and his secret holds and being McConnell’s “muscle”.
Hill Dweller
Kyl also desperately tried to undermine the START Treaty by demanding crazy shit, which Obama gave them, only to see the Republicans cut the very same stuff they requested a few months after taking over the House.
The Republican party is full of nihilists.
Villago Delenda Est
Don’t forget his display of assholishness when he bitched about any medical plan including women’s health coverage.
This guy needs his fucking boner pills, but to hell with the bitches.
Yutsano
@Zagloba: Are you rich trust fund baby with Muslim wife? No? No wingnut welfare institute for you then.
The Dangerman
Kyl is a leading candidate for the top of the “Those Who Fucked Us” list. Asshole.
Someone should do a remake of the old Kentucky Fried Movie skit “Zinc Oxide and You”; this time, what happens when all that the Government has produced disappears. GPS? Gone. Freeways? Gone. Internet? Gone. These dumbfucks will probably take down the Bullet Train in CA, which would open up all sorts of potential markets; again, ASSHOLES.
Zagloba
Damn, I knew I was doing something wrong. My squeeze can pass for American Indian, will that do in a pinch?
Judas Escargot
I don’t recall ever voting for Grover Fucking Norquist.
And as a trust-fund baby, he’s essentially a ‘made man’ who never needs to work for a living or make or sell anything: So there’s no (legal) way to hurt him, which pisses me off even more.
If he gets his wish and our country disintegrates, I hope someone will have the presence of mind to take him out before his plane to Dubai leaves.
licensed to kill time
Kyl is such a fuckstick. And the thing is, most Americans have no idea – I saw him on Press the Meat with Kerry, and he was all “Oh, we Republicans tried to be so reasonable but the Democrats wouldn’t sgree to anything because it didn’t raise taxes”.
He sounds so “reasonable”…of course, it’s exactly the OPPOSITE – Repubs won’t agree to ANYTHING that raises taxes even a tiny smidgen.
Just makes me want to break the TV, but instead I turned it off.
licensed to kill time
Press the Meat video and transcript here, if you can stand it. Why would you want to, really.
NR
We should be grateful to Kyl for killing the SuperDuperCommittee. Any “deal” that emerged from it was likely to follow the pattern of every other “deal” we’ve seen in the past three years–the 99% get fucked over royally in exchange for a few crumbs from the 1%.
wenchacha
@The Dangerman: Pretty close to the theme of “Idiocracy.”
agrippa
@NR:
I think that we should be grateful for Kyl killing the coomitte ( thank Kyl for being Kyl). It was a silly idea designed to serve as a ‘pretend to take action’ game.
It would be a good idea if the AZ Democratic Party found a candidate to defeat him in the election and send him to a lobbying firm.
burnspbesq
Arizona Republican politics are extraordinary. In 1964, who would have guessed that the people who would come after him would make Barry Goldwater look calm and reasonable by comparison?
Donut
@NR:
This is the correct take, NR.
I think after the debacle over the summer, the White House finally saw the light and realized that most voters who are going to show up in 2012 don’t give a shit about deficits right now, and is probably fairly pleased (I hope so, anyway) that this shit sammich of anti-democracy known as Super Committee fell apart. If any of the deals offered by Dems had come to fruition, I’m not so sure Obama could run on a populist platform, which is, IMO, the only way he can win re-election. So happy to see him step up and say he will veto legislation that reverses the base-line already established by the Budget Control Act. It was shitty law-making, but I’d rather the country swallow it than see the whole thing re-legislated. John Boehner and Mitch McConnel own that law, and they are sorry they set up that deal now. Hang it around their necks day in and day out for the next 11 months, and tie the Republican prez nominee to it, and Obama has a great shot.
suzanne
Repeated for emphasis.
The Flake/Carmona race should be interesting.
I really cannot emphasize what a stain on my state Kyl has been. And his shameless pandering for the VP nomination is just the cherry on top of the crap sundae that Arizonans have been forced to eat since I was in elementary school.
suzanne
@agrippa:
Kyl has announced his retirement from the Senate. He did say, however, that he’d consider a vice-presidential nomination, but other than that, he’s done.
Jeff Flake is the Republican running for the seat. Richard Carmona will be the Democratic nominee, now that Gabby’s officially declared that she’s out.
General Stuck
Kyl didn’t kill the supercommittee, Grover Norquist did, someone more powerful than any elected congress person, except maybe the dem potus. Kyl might have pounded the stake into it’s heart sooner rather than later, and saved us some bullshit of going through the motions of trying to pass something like a grand bargain, in the midst of a very emo election for both sides.
But what was true in the beginning, remained true though out, that dems and Obama stuck to their guns on large tax increases for the wealthy, with the knowledge that GOP bagmen for the plutocracy could only vote yea on it, if they had a mind to completely blow up what is left of the disparate shards of once a semi coherent republican party.
Weren’t gonna happen, tax policy as their last viable issue, and dems knew it. With a win win strategy. And wingers apparently thought they could bluff Obama into doing anything to keep the trigger cuts from happening, especially the military, from their old playbook of leading dems around by the nose as getting called weak on national defense. They may try it, but don’t seem to have noticed that Obama has taken that issue for his own, with very high approvals on foreign affairs in general. And by a democrat, no less. Drank their motherfucking OBL milkshakes,
flounder
Kyl’s greatest hit was when he lied to the Supreme Court. “Bitch Beer” Milbank is a douche for not bringing it up. I suspect no one ever brings it up because it implicates Lindsey Graham, who everyone knows is held in the highest regard by the villagers.
Batocchio
Flounder beat me to it. I wrote about it at the time, but Kyl and Graham lied to the Supreme Court. Graham also lied (in the opposite direction, denying his true aims) to his fellow senators on the floor of the senate and to the public in an WaPo op-ed about the same case, Hamdan. It takes a special type of scumbag to do that – lying to the Supreme Court is unforgivable enough, but they did so to strip due process from prisoners (due process being, ya know, one of the hallmarks of civilization), and to provide cover for Bush administration. Most likely it was to cover specifically for the Bushies’ torture regime; Graham’s been working hard on that for almost a decade now. They are both absolute scumbags who will sell out justice and their own country to protect the Republican Party, their torturer buddies, and their plutocrat chums.