Defense industry-backed Republicans are so desperate to stave off the automatic military spending cuts that they’re trying to scare Americans about job losses and an ensuing nose-diving economy should the military spending cuts hold.

Except there’s one problem. Republicans aren’t supposed to believe that government spending creates jobs. But in this last act of desperation, however, it seems that Republicans pushing to preserve America’s bloated military budget have come to a pretty significant epiphany. Next week, three right-wing think tanks will co-host Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Reps. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) and Randy Forbers (R-VA) to “discuss the dangers of deeper defense cuts.” All four lawmakers are warning about job loss because of sequestration, yet they’ve all previously argued that government spending doesn’t create jobs:

SEN. KELLY AYOTTE

Now: “So we’re not just talking about the jobs issue, which is, of course, of concern to anyone who serves in Congress. We’re talking about lost lives if we don’t give our men and women the equipment that they need.” [6/24/12]

Then: “It’s not the government that’s going to create jobs in this country, it’s our small businesses, it’s the private sector.” [9/22/10]

SEN. JON KYL

Now: “The whole point here [staving off the sequester] is to try to get some economic growth, job creation, to get out of this recession.” [5/24/12]

Then: “Faced with the reality of historic unemployment rates and record federal debt, I had hoped that President Obama, by now, would understand that even more government spending doesn’t create jobs.” [9/09/11]

REP. BUCK MCKEON

Now: “Sequestration’s impact on the economy would be sudden and severe, … result[ing] in the loss of about 1 million jobs in 2013 and 2014 and a half a percent cut to America’s already meager economic growth.” [6/24/12]

Then: “We don’t look to the government usually to create jobs. What we like to see them do is get out of our hair and let us create the jobs.” [5/21/12]

REP. RANDY FORBES

Now: “For reasons of both national security and local jobs, citizens of Hampton Roads ought to carefully consider the sober assessments of our military commanders and leaders regarding the impacts of adding another $600 billion in security cuts to the $489 billion Congress has already enacted.” [10/08/11]

Then: “Congressman Forbes believes there is a simple truth when it comes to job creation in America: real solutions create real growth that generates real jobs. In order to make this happen, government needs to get out of the way.” [Forbes' website]

And outside of the hypocrisy, the GOP’s jobs argument is spurious. Republicans are holding up a new industry-backed study claiming the military spending cuts will mean a loss of nearly one million jobs. But experts have pointed out the report’s many flaws, mainly that government spending in non-defense sectors of the economy creates more jobs.

The study is good for “political purposes, not very good analysis of the labor market,” said defense budget expert Gordon Adams. CATO expert Chris Preble said the report shows that the industry is just “trying to save their profits.”

There’s also no evidence that the military spending sequester will be “devastating” as some have argued and polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans favor cutting DOD’s budget. But Republicans will most likely ignore these facts and fight to preserve the Pentagon’s needlessly bloated budget, all while abandoning a central tenet of their party’s ideology.

On the floor of the Senate Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repudiated Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) McCarthyesque witch-hunt to root out the alleged Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the U.S. government. The flap started when Bachmann all but directly accused Secretary Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin of working on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood in a letter with four colleagues to the State Department’s Inspector General demanding an investigation.

While some Democrats have taken Bachmann to task for the charges, some Republicans, like House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers (MI), lauded her witch-hunt.

Enter McCain, who put his foot down today and chided his fellow Republicans for the accusations against Abedin. McCain brought up his personal relationship with Abedin, adding that she “represents what is best about America.” He noted Bachmann’s letter and its sourcing to a report from notorious Islamophobe Frank Gaffney‘s Center for Security Policy (CSP). He then said:

To say that the accusations made in both documents are not substantiated by the evidence they offer is to be overly polite and diplomatic about it. It is far better, and more accurate, to talk straight: These allegations about Huma Abedin, and the report from which they are drawn, are nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable citizen, a dedicated American, and a loyal public servant.

Watch the video:

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) lead the charge against Bachmann, demanding “credible, substantial evidence” to back up her accusations. Bachmann then penned a long letter responding to Ellison, which he rightly dismissed as “16 pages worth of repeated false allegations. Just regurgitated nonsense.”

But Bachmann’s response to Ellison did adjust her sources. While many of the 59 footnotes are still dubious — such as those linking to the Islamophobe Steve Emerson’s group, the Investigative Project — she dropped the sole source cited in her initial letter to the State Department: Gaffney‘s CSP. In his request for information, Ellison had noted that Gaffney — a sometime Bachmann adviser and booster — had been “widely discredited.” McCain, who said he had worked with CSP and considers Gaffney a “friend” nonetheless called the accusations in the report “scurrilous.”

Dick Cheney was on the Hill yesterday trying to rally his GOP troops to fight automatic military spending cuts. Cheney reportedly relied on his experience as Defense Secretary to make his case (ironic given the DOD’s budget fell drastically under his watch), but according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Cheney’s real concern is about the next war:

Cheney, 71, said defense spending is “not a spigot you can turn on and turn off, that you need to keep money flowing in a predictable way so you can plan for the next war,” Graham said after the Senate Republicans’ weekly luncheon. They heard from the former vice president, who was President George H.W. Bush’s defense secretary from 1989 to 1993.

There’s absolutely no evidence that suggests the U.S. won’t be able to plan for or fight any wars should the military spending cuts sequester take effect. As the CBO reported this week, cutting military spending by $500 billion over the next ten years, as the sequester mandates, will still allow the Pentagon to spend as much money as it did in 2006. And at the time, the United States spent more on its military than any country in the world many times over and was engaged in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Cheney is worried about the U.S. not being able to fight/start a war. It’s also a bit concerning that he’s openly predicting a “next” one. Indeed, he lobbied hard in the waning days of the Bush administration for an attack on Iran and presumably he thinks he’ll get another shot at it should Mitt Romney win the White House.

When Rep. Keith Ellison (R-MN) asked his colleague Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to produce “credible, substantial evidence” of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “deep penetration” into the U.S. government, she responded with a 16-page letter. In her new letter — a follow-up on letters she wrote with colleagues to the Inspectors General of four government agencies demanding they look into her chargers — Bachmann denied she had suggested Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin is linked to the Brotherhood and gave 59 footnoted sources for her claim.

On Anderson Cooper’s CNN show last night, Ellison responded to Bachmann’s latest salvo, saying her accusations were “simply scare-mongering” and compared her quest to root out Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators to Sen. Joe McCarthy’s infamous witch-hunt for Communist agents. Ellison went on::

COOPER: You asked for a full accounting of the evidence these members of Congress were using to make their claims. You got a 16- page letter back. Does their evidence hold up?

ELLISON: No, it’s 16 pages worth of nothing. It’s 16 pages worth of repeated false allegations. Just regurgitated nonsense. And, you know, it doesn’t — 16 pages doesn’t take nothing and turn it into something. It’s still nothing…

COOPER: Have you seen any evidence of “deep penetration” — that was the words that Congressman Bachmann used — “deep penetration” by the Muslim Brotherhood into the security apparatus of the United States?

ELLISON: No, it’s not true. It doesn’t exist. It’s a phantom.

Watch the whole interview here:

Cooper also related a statement from Abedin’s office responding to Bachmann’s allegations:

They are nothing but vicious and disgusting lies that have no place in reasonable political discourse. And anyone who traffics in them should be ashamed of themselves.

Ellison was right: Bachmann’s response simply rehashed the same charges against Abedin and others. Salon, which initially reported the letter, spelled out the absurdity of the allegations.

Bachmann denied the clearly implied charge that Abedin worked on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. But in her first letter to the State Department, she named Abedin’s torturous and distant family connections to the group and said, “Her position affords her routine access to the Secretary and to policy-making.” She added, in the next sentence, that the Obama adminisrtation has “taken actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.”

Responding to Ellison, Bachmann denied she was accusing Abedin directly and said her concern was simply about the security clearance process. She wrote that family members are already examined as “potentially disqualifying conditions for obtaining security clearance, which undoubtably Ms. Abedin had to obtain to function in her position.” In other words, the process she’s concerned about is already in place, but not to her liking, leaving one with little else to assume but that she is indeed making sordid implications about Abedin. Ellison called this “the worst of guilt by association.”