When Sen. Lamar Alexander resigned his leadership position in the GOP, I had a faint hope that Alexander was protesting the caricature his party has become with the increasing but clueless influence of the tea party. But no, that was for naught, as his very first Sunday show appearance after his Good Bye Cruel GOP letter of resignation was to blame Senate Leader Harry Reid for "manufacturing a crisis" in terms of the potential for another government shutdown over funding disaster relief for Hurricane Irene:
CROWLEY: Senator Alexander, let me ask you if you buy into Senator Warner's premise, which is that tea party folks are basically at fault, I think I'm -- that's not a direct quote, but that the tea party-backed folks in the House are the ones behind this stalemate that is now threatening yet another government shutdown. Do you agree with that?
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER (R), TENNESSEE: No, I don't. You know, I'll give the Senate Democratic leader most of the credit. He manufactured a crisis all week about disaster when there's no crisis.
Everybody knows we're going to pay for every single penny of disaster aid that the president declares and that FEMA certifies. And the House sent over a bill that does that and the Senate should have approved it.
What it did was take $1.5 billion of unobligated funds and say, we're going to -- instead of adding to the debt we're going to not add to the debt when we do this.
No crisis? Our third approach to a government shutdown in a year due to the ridiculous hostage taking of the Republican Party and it's Harry Reid that is manufacturing the crisis? We are well and truly in Bizarro-land. But of course, it's not for Candy Crowley to point out that every little thing is being held up by the Republicans in congress, making this one of the least productive congressional sessions in history.
And if "everybody knows" that Congress will approve the disaster aid, then what is the kabuki theater that the tea party Republicans insist upon? Why are Republicans suddenly now looking for budgetary offsets when they approved trillions of off-budget expenditures while they held the majority?
Of course, none of this was raised by Crowley in response. Why give her viewers any context or facts to assess Alexander's statement?
