Reprinted from John Daly's February 12, 2007 Blog

Watching yesterday’s Meet The Press made me realize neither Republicans nor Democrats have a clue about how ridiculous they look.

Tim Russert’s guests were two party leaders: Democrat Steny Hoyer and Republican John Boehner. The usual, senseless arguments on Iraq occurred.  Hoyer and the Democrats want to embarrass the President on a non-binding resolution.  Boehner wants an immediate vote about whether the troops will remain funded.

I’ve gone over this before on the site.  These moves are designed to help write each other’s simplistic campaign ads for 2008.  Democrats want to say, “This GOP candidate voted to keep our sons and daughters in Iraq.”  The Republicans want to say, “See this Democrat is against our troops.”

But here’s what I saw later in the interview.  Boehner and Hoyer were holding hands under the table massaging each other.  No, they’re not lovers.  Instead, Hoyer and Boehner are the type of workers, if you had hired them, you would fire immediately.  (Wait!  People in Maryland and Ohio did hire these two.)

I really mean they were holding hands figuratively.  It’s strange that they fought like cats and dogs over Iraq.  That is, until the issue of campaign money was mentioned.  Congress has found a unique way around the lobbying reform bills they just passed, which had Hoyer changing his tune: “I tend to agree with John that the public doesn’t support that…”  What he was going to say was "public funding of campaigns."  Congressman, we don’t know that yet.  We do know this: no incumbent wants to be restrained by the amount of money he can raise.

But here’s the hypocrisy.  These lawmakers are still going on the lavish fundraisers as Tim Russert explained, “Instead of picking up the lawmaker’s tab, lobbyists pay a political fund-raising committee set up by the lawmaker. In turn, the committee pays the legislator’s way.”

Take a look at yesterday’s New York Times.  Also look at the previous articles about Senator Clinton.  She is instructing donors on how to bundle millions of dollars in donations – legally -- to her campaign, again, to circumvent the lobbyist reform laws passed just a few weeks ago.  Remember, it was lobbyists who did the bundling openly.  Now they have cover.

But here’s the best part of yesterday’s Meet The Press.  Hoyer tries to drag Russert into the muck. 

REP. HOYER: Fund-raising’s going to go on. So however it’s—if you have a reception, Tim, as you know, you’ve been to some. If you have a...

MR. RUSSERT: Not—not political fund-raisers.

REP. HOYER: No, no...

MR. RUSSERT: I don’t do political fund-raisers.

These lawmakers are so entrenched in raising money they don’t realize that journalists are not allowed to attend fundraisers for the sake of perception – a perception they don’t either understand or care about.

If we do nothing about this, then yes we are stupid people.