In the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the House came closer than it ever has to voting for an end to the war in Afghanistan today when a bipartisan amendment that would have required President Obama to submit a timetable for withdrawal failed by just 12 votes, netting approval from 26 Republicans.

But some Republicans were not pleased with the vote. Tea Party firebrand Rep. Allen West (R-FL) — a retired Army officer who was discharged after shooting at an unarmed detainee in Iraq — denounced the amendment, telling the Miami Herald that his anti-war colleagues should “get shot” to understand the true threat of the Taliban:

“Is the Taliban still fighting? I spent 2.5 years in Afghanistan. Just because you kill Osama bin Laden does not mean that the Taliban has stopped fighting,” he said. “Now can we fight a little smarter? Absolutely.”

Asked about efforts to curb U.S. involvement, West said, “I would take these gentlemen over and let them get shot at a few times and maybe they’d have a different opinion.”

With the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) still fresh in Americans’ minds, West’s comments are especially irresponsible. But perhaps this should be expected from West. In January, he criticized Obama for traveling to Afghanistan with a security detail, saying, “[I]f I’m asking my young men and women to go out there and put their lives on the line, I should be willing and able to do the exact same thing.” West also had no problem hiring right-wing Florida radio host Joyce Kaufman to be his chief of staff, even after she proclaimed at a Tea Party rally, “if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”

On the heels of last night’s Senate defeat of the Republicans’ Medicare-ending budget, presidential contender Herman Cain went on Fox News to defend the plan. Cain has recently pulled ahead of former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) in the polls, and used his new credibility to admonish the rest of the GOP field for backing away from the plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

As national backlash to Ryan’s Medicare privatization plan has grown, Republicans have become increasingly divided about how to sell something so deeply unpopular. Many, including Ryan himself, have cynically tried to deny that it’s a voucher scheme at all, but rather the much more appealingly-named “premium support” plan. Speaking with Fox and Friends host Gretchen Carlson, Cain criticized this hedging and urged his fellow candidates to call the Ryan plan what it is — a voucher system:

CAIN: Nobody’s talking about the fact that the centerpiece of Ryan’s plan is a voucher. Now, a lot of people don’t like to use that term because it has a negative connotation. That is what we need. [...]

CARLSON: It sounds, Mr. Cain, like you’re supporting Congressman Ryan’s plan. It’s interesting becuase other Republican candidates like Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty are not outright supporting it because they say they’re going to come up with their own plans. How do you respond to that?

CAIN: I support Ryan’s plan 100%. We don’t need to come up with another plan. The people who are backing away from Ryan’s plan, which is very well thought out…they simply lack courage. I don’t know another way to put it. They lack courage. Don’t back away from something simply because it’s controversial or because it’s difficult to explain to the American people.

Watch it:

To placate the conservative base of the party without destroying their chances with a national audience, GOP contenders have had to walk a fine line — endorse the idea of Medicare reform and applauding Ryan for his “bold” attempt, but stop short of coming out for the plan itself. But Cain, who has never had a problem with bluntness, sees their rhetorical acrobatics as nothing but dishonest pandering.

Our guest blogger is Stephen Lacey, Climate Progress Reporter/Blogger.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wants to kill New Jersey’s participation in the nation’s first successful carbon trading program. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a ten-state climate and clean energy program that has reduced emissions and brought tens of millions of dollars to New Jersey ratepayers. Following a multi-million-dollar campaign to derail RGGI by the Koch front group Americans for Prosperity, Christie today called RGGI a “gimmicky” program that is “nothing more than a tax on electricity.”

But in a 2008 campaign ad, Christie said, “I will be New Jersey’s number-one clean-energy advocate.” He explicitly embraced President Obama’s climate and clean energy goals, which included a national cap-and-trade system for clean energy investment:

There is no doubt that renewable energy is the future here in New Jersey and there is really no better time for us to begin the discussion about how it will not only lead us to energy independence, but also how it will help create more good paying, middle class jobs in New Jersey. It’s a change that President Obama stands firmly behind. I couldn’t agree more.

Watch it:

Christie has now joined Tea Party opposition to Obama’s clean-energy policy to the detriment of programs he once supported. In his press conference today, Christie said he didn’t want to “overplay” the benefits to ratepayers because “we’re not talking about a huge difference.”

In fact, in addition to reducing New Jersey’s emissions by around 80,000 tons per year, this “gimmicky” program brought back $29.6 million to New Jersey ratepayers in 2010, supporting enough clean electricity to supply 20,000 homes. A new progress report out from RGGI shows that for every dollar invested by the program, states have gotten $3 to $4 in benefits.

“There’s only one thing you need to do in order to pull out of RGGI – ignore all the tangible, clean energy benefits. That’s it,” said the Conservation Law Foundation’s Seth Kaplan to Think Progress. “Christie’s had a good record in the past. The only reason to pull out now would be to score some ideological political points.”

New Jersey follows three other states – Delaware, Maine and New Hampshire – that have considered pulling out of RGGI. Resisting the polluting influence of Koch-backed lobbying and media campaigns, all those states decided to remain in the program because of the proven, positive benefits to ratepayers and businesses.

Our guest blogger is Elon Green, a freelance writer living in Brooklyn.

During his 17-year career, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has held many unorthodox views: the rich, contrary to all available evidence, are not getting richer; Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo’s brutal military forces lack weapons; global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated;” the media invented WMDs as an excuse for the invasion of Iraq; and so on.

Inhofe’s latest theory — that President Obama’s 2009 decision to shift missile defense from land to sea is evidence that Obama is “going out of his way to embrace … the ones who want to kill us” — is equally ridiculous. Here’s the exchange from his interview yesterday with Hugh Hewitt:

JI: And that was just trying to embrace that group of people. And I think his, one of his major concerns is what’s happening in Iran. Netanyahu is very familiar with what they are willing to do, what they are going to do. And yet, this administration, if you remember, he was the one who brought down the ground-based Interceptor that would have protected the United States and Western Europe from something coming from Iran. So it’s not just the lines that are drawn. It’s going out of his way to embrace that whole element.

HH: That radical Islamist element is what I think you’re talking about that is…

JI: Oh yeah. They’re the ones who want to kill us. I mean, you know, to think that they would even embrace the idea that they would have that element, with Hamas tied in with the Palestinians, Hamas who are doing everything they can to destroy Israel.

Inhofe’s words are both poorly timed and just plain wrong. Obama’s decision to scrap the Bush Administration’s European missile-defense program was shrewd, widely-praised and helped strengthen the U.S. relationship with Russia. Meanwhile, that Obama ordered the death of Osama bin Laden suggests that he doesn’t exactly embrace “the ones who want to kill us.”

In the same interview with Hewitt, Inhofe attacked Obama for his supposed aggression toward Israel. Inhofe told Hewitt that Obama must be mentally ill to have given his speech mentioning the 1967 Israeli-Palestinian border right before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit and the AIPAC dinner. Inhofe told Hewitt: “[Obama] has never been rejected in his life, and I think there’s something — I’m not qualified to diagnose him — but there’s something wrong with a guy that is going to go out of his way to do all these things right before these two events take place.”