In case you missed it, last week our soon-to-be-senior senator (shudder) John Cornyn made a righteous assclown of himself during a judiciary committee hearing when he called for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign. Here is the video of Cornyn getting all up on his high horse and then getting that horse all up on a giant soapbox for the TV cameras:
Why, you might be wondering, did Cornyn, himself the former Attorney General of Texas, ask the head of the Department of Justice to resign? Was it because Holder has aggressively pursued Republican efforts to disenfranchise minority voters via their heinous photo voter ID schemes and redistricting gerrymanders? No, don't be silly! It's because Cornyn's had it in for Holder since his nomination hearings, when Cornyn tried to pigeonhole Holder into saying he supports torture (Holder does not). Cornyn told the Fox News propaganda machine last week that he "has always had reservations about Holder prior to his confirmation," which probably have nothing to do with Holder being African-American or nominated by the first African-American President. I am sure that putting a prominent African-American in charge of the DOJ doesn't make a whole lot of Southern Republican men nervous, not at all.
And don't forget the heaping pile of hypocrisy that goes with Cornyn's blatantly partisan and political attacks on Holder.
Cornyn is chairman of the National Republican Senate Committee. HuffPo reminds us that back in 2007, Cornyn lambasted then-DSCC Chairman Chuck Schumer, also a Judiciary Committee member, for pursuing investigations into whether or not then-AG Alberto Gonzalez had fired US Attorneys for political reasons. At the time, Cornyn said, "When the leader of the effort on the Judiciary Committee is the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Chuck Schumer, I think it undermines the apparent legitimacy of what is a legitimate inquiry." In the end, Schumer was right, an inspector general concluded the firings were political in nature. Schumer 1 million, Cornyn 0. Moving on.
Still, the question remains as to why our soon-to-be-senior Senator is behaving so poorly on a national stage. Maybe Cornyn is just acting out because he can't handle the fact that Holder is 10 times the Attorney General than he'll ever have a chance to be? Maybe he's just trying to score cheap electoral points with the Republican base by attacking the African-American Attorney General and speaking of long-held "reservations" about the man that are totally not rooted in race whatsoever? Maybe Cornyn just loves the TV cameras so much he can't help himself but to behave like a sanctimonious assclown when they're around in the hopes of getting on Fox News again?
It's worth noting that back when Cornyn was our state's AG -- in an era before Greg Abbott turned the office into a taxpayer-funded litigation practice on behalf of the Republican Party of Texas -- Cornyn was by many accounts much less partisan, much less inclined to frivolous lawsuits against the Feds, and much more focused on simply doing his everyday job.
But given the rancor and obstinacy that characterizes the modern-day GOP and what it takes to rise up in Republican Senate leadership, it's no surprise that once Cornyn got to Washington, he started behaving less like a public servant and more like a cheap political hack.
All in all, John Cornyn is falsely accusing Holder of politicizing his job in the actual way that Texas AG Greg Abbott totally does politicize his job. The irony is so rich, Republicans would give it a tax cut.
