GOP Gas Pains In Ohio: VP Cheney Calls Boehner's Tax Suspension 'False Notion'

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Whatever one thinks about about Vice President Dick Cheney, this fact cannot be ignored. He's an oilman at heart. And Cheney says U.S. Rep. John Boehner, the House Republican leader from SW Ohio, isn't really doing much for consumers by pushing legislation to temporarily suspend the federal gasoline tax. Cheney says it is sort of an empty fraud. You didn't know Boehner, R-8 Butler County, was behind that plan? You thought it was John McCain and Hillary Clinton's idea? Well, you would be wrong.

On May 30, Boehner said he was "supporting legislation . . . to suspend the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax for the summer. No one should mistake this for a comprehensive solution, and I'm under no illusion that this is going to end the pain motorists are feeling."

To be fair, Boehner also said he wanted to end earmarks to reduce the federal budget deficit (a pet project), although it was not clear how that would ease the nearly $4 per gallon cost of gasoline.

Cheney says suspending the gas tax won't really help consumers at all. The vice president basically dumped on the idea. Ohio's newspapers pretty much ignored the slap at the state's top GOP official in Congress. Cheney's words were widely reported:

"I think it's a false notion, in the sense that you're not going to have much of an impact, given the size of the gasoline tax on the total cost of the gallon of gas. You might buy a little bit of relief there, but it's minimal."

OH-08 GOP John Boehner: He's Been Hanging Out In Libya With Col. Kaddafi

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (TDB) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been giving the Chinese hell. House Minority Leader John Boehner has been making nice with Col. Moammar Kaddafi, the Libyan strongman. News of the Butler County Republican's soiree is here on JANA, the Libyan news service where Kaddafi is identifed as the "leader of the revolution." Boehner reportedly was interested in tapping the Libyan oilfields. Here's another story about the meeting from AFP, the French wire service. And here's Boehner's press release (h/t Weapons of Mass Discussion), which talks about enlisting Kaddafi in the War on Terror.

OH-08 GOP John Boehner: He Doesn't Know Israel Is A Middle East Democracy

Map Courtesy of FOX News
MIDDLETOWN, Ohio (TDB) -- The highest-ranking Republican in the U.S. House apparently doesn't understand that Israel -- the closest ally of the United States in the Middle East -- is a democracy. Either that, or the House GOP leader is so remarkably blind in his support for President Bush that he would stretch the truth and go out of his way to snub a friendly nation. Matt Hurley at the conservative Ohio blog Weapons of Mass Discussion has John Boehner's statement on the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, which he reprints. Hurley doesn't note Boehner's slip into ignorance that praises the war as paving the way "for the first democracy in a part of the world that needs it most."

Ooops. Israel has been around since 1948, electing governments and prime ministers and parliamentarians who serve in the Knesset. It is a multi-party state. There is a segment of the world that does not consider Israel the first democracy in the Middle East, but they tend to be islamists, militants, or supporters of the Palestinian movement that someday hopes to drive the Jews in Israel into the sea. Boehner surely must not have meant to side with the islamists by slighting Israel's nearly 60 years as a democracy. Or did he distort the truth hoping to confuse Americans, who may not know the region's geography? Israel shares borders with Jordan, which is becoming a constitutional monarchy; Lebanon, which is struggling to regain some footing as a democracy; Egypt, which is a republic but has an authoritarian government, and Syria, which is considered a Baathist dictatorship. Turkey is in the region, too, and is considered a Middle Eastern a democracy. Tukey border Iraq, Boehner's "first democracy." And some of the Persian Gulf states are moving toward democracy.

The complete text of Boehner's statement on the war's 5th anniversary is here. His error about Israel appears in the first paragraph:

"In the five years that have passed since the start of this conflict, our men and women in uniform have heroically ousted a terrorist dictator, freed a nation, and planted the seeds for political reconciliation that will pave the way for the first democracy in a part of the world that needs it most. Today, after countless obstacles to our success over the past five years, Iraq's fledgling democracy is at long last taking important steps toward the ultimate goal of self-rule."