Republican lawmakers and candidates have spent the past year railing against congressional earmarks as the embodiment of everything wrong with “business as usual in Washington.” And under heavy pressure from the tea party movement, they approved earmark bans for GOP members in the House and Senate last month.

Yesterday, the Senate unveiled an omnibus appropriations bill to fund the government. Senate Republicans immediately attacked the bill en masse for containing billions in earmarks, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) calling the spending provisions “completely and totally inappropriate” and saying he is “actively working to defeat” the bill. “This nearly 2,000-page omnibus filled with thousands of earmarks,” Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said, shows that “President Obama and Democrats have apparently learned nothing from this November’s election.”

Yet, the same may be said about congressional Republicans, who themselves requested over $2 billion in the earmarks attached the omnibus, including millions from McConnell himself:

Earlier this year, McConnell asked for $4 million for marijuana eradication efforts by the Kentucky National Guard; $1 million for construction of the Kentucky Blood Center Building; and $650,000 for Advanced Genetic Technologies, a DNA research center at the University of Kentucky.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “has a $379,000 earmark to study port dredging in Charleston, something he considers key to economic development.” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) championed an earmark that would prevent the state of Texas from converting existing interstate highway lanes into toll roads. And Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) requested over $16 million in defense-related earmarks.

Appearing on Fox News this morning, Cornyn attacked the omnibus bill for containing earmarks, but host Bill Hemmer confronted Cornyn with his own $16 million request. At first, the senator fumbled and tried to change the subject, but after being pressed, Cornyn defended the merits of his earmarks but not the process, before finally trying to exculpate himself by saying he requested the money “earlier on in the year”:

HEMMER: You yourself has asked for earmarks too. … Can you defend that senator?

CORNYN: Well, I believe I can. But I’m not going to. Because I’m going to vote against this bill. … I think we need an earmark moratorium, which I voted for two years, till we fix this broken system, because it’s become a symbol of wasteful Washington spending.

HEMMER: I get it, but I’m confused then, then why is there $16 million in requests from you? Is that not true?

CORNYN: Earlier on in the year, I did request earmarks that I think are individually defensible. And if we had a debate on the floor, I think I could show how they help our men and women in uniform fight two different wars.

Watch it:

Of course, Cornyn is right to argue that many earmarks have merit and provide necessary funds for important projects in lawmakers’ districts. For this reason, Democrats and a handful of dissenting Republicans rebuffed efforts to impose a binding earmark ban in the Senate last month. Moreover, as retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) said, “We’re fooling the American people when we tell them the problem [with the deficit] is earmarks.”

But if Cornyn and his colleagues are going to pander to the tea party movement and demonize earmarks, they should at least practice what they preach. But so far, they have not. Just three days after the Senate GOP voted to enact their earmark ban, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the number two Senate Republican, “got himself a whopping $200 million” earmark for his state. Meanwhile, the group of House Republicans most closely aligned with the tea party, those in the Tea Party Caucus, have taken over $1 billion in earmarks over the past year.

In 2009, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) proclaimed that he would do everything possible to block Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) from taking his seat in the Senate, even though Franken led his Republican opponent Norm Coleman in the vote tally. Declaring that he would fight “World War III” to keep Franken out of the Senate for “years,” Cornyn reasoned that allowing Coleman’s legal challenges to Franken were more important than providing Minnesota with a senator. However, with Republican Joe Miller challenging the ballots in his election with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Cornyn is singing a different tune.

Roll Call reports that Cornyn is demanding that Alaskans simply deserve full representation, and is hoping the legal challenges regarding the 2010 Alaska senate election do not deprive the state of its senator when Congress convenes in January:

An Alaska state court judge is expected to make a ruling on the Senate race by Friday, but with an appeal to the state Supreme Court likely, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn said he hopes the court process concludes soon. As we’ve reported, the ongoing battle has put Republicans on Capitol Hill in a tough spot. The Texan addressed that concern Wednesday in an interview with Roll Call. “We just have to be patient and wait for the judge to decide,” said Cornyn, a former judge. “I understand that could be as early as [Thursday], and I hope it doesn’t go on much longer because I think the people of Alaska deserve to have a Senator when we reconvene again in January, and not still have that up in the air.”

When it comes to a Republican senator, Cornyn urgently believes that Alaska (population 698,473) deserves full representation in Congress. However, he was more than happy to deprive 5,266,214 Minnesotans a vote in the senate because of partisan reasons. Cornyn prevented Franken from taking his seat using the threat of a filibuster. Cornyn’s National Republican Campaign Committee also provided lawyers for Coleman to keep Franken out of the Senate for six months.

This month, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) began airing a race-baiting anti-immigrant campaign ad that the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce found to be “totally abhorrent and shocking.” The ad targets the immigration stance of Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-LA), Vitter’s opponent: the narrator says “Thanks to him, we may as well put out a welcome sign for illegal aliens,” as footage of dirty, goofy-looking Latino men slipping through a hole in a fence displaying a neon welcome sign runs across the screen. The men step into a limo with a giant government check they defiantly hang out the window as they zoom away. “I’m going to use the ‘R’ word and say racist,” said the spokeswoman for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “We are saying you owe us an apology, we are offended, we expect an immediate apology and we expect this ad to be yanked from the airwaves immediately,” she continued.

Not only did Vitter continue to run the ad, but he defended it during a debate last week, asking “Is it a stereotype that folks coming across the border — that is a problem and they look like that? Dennis that is a fact, that is not a stereotype! Let’s get our heads out of the sand!” This morning on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, joined Vitter in defending the ad. Amanpour repeatedly invited Cornyn to denounce the ad’s racial overtones, which he refused to do, saying only it was “appropriate” to raise the issue of illegal immigration:

AMANPOUR: Some people have called that [ad] racist. I want to know, do you think it’s appropriate to finger Hispanics in that way? Do you think it’s appropriate?

CORNYN: I wish we had time to show Melancon’s ads against Vitter. They’re pretty tough.

AMANPOUR: But let me just ask about this particular ad —

CORNYN: I think border security is a federal responsibility and one that the federal government has simply failed to deal with in an appropriate way. And I think it’s appropriate to raise that issue in the campaign.

AMANPOUR: But do you think it’s appropriate in this way? I mean you’re from Texas. You have a big Hispanic group there. Do you think it’s appropriate? Would you have done that?

CORNYN: I didn’t write the ad.

AMANPOUR: Would you have done it?

CORNYN: I think calling attention to illegal immigration is — for example, this last year, Christiane, 45,000 people immigrated to the United States from countries other than Mexico, including counting like Yemen where this bomb emanated from. It’s a national security issue.

Watch it:

Last year, Cornyn hit back against race-based attacks on then-Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, saying that Newt Gingrich’s allegations that Sotomayor was prejudiced against non-Hispanics were “terrible,” and “not the kind of tone any of us want to set.” By refusing to denounce Vitter’s ad, and even suggesting it’s “appropriate,” Cornyn has apparently revised his opinion of what is an appropriate tone.

Yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) made the extraordinary demand that every single piece of legislation in the Senate would be blocked by his office unless it had been preapproved by his own staffers. As Roll Call reported, “Democratic and Republican aides alike were stunned, arguing that DeMint had essentially made a unilateral decision to end legislative activity in the Senate.”

At a fundraiser for Republican Senate candidate Ken Buck yesterday afternoon, ThinkProgress interviewed several GOP Senators about DeMint’s move to singlehandedly take control of the chamber. DeMint himself told us that his crop of candidates, like Buck, would support his efforts if they are elected to the Senate. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the chairman of the GOP committee tasked with electing more Republican Senators, did not find anything wrong with DeMint’s undemocratic move to seize control of Congress. Asked about DeMint’s unilateral power grab, Cornyn simply smiled and said that he “certainly think[s] it’s a good idea” because it would give more time for lawmakers to review bills:

TP: I have a quick question about Senator DeMint. What do you think about his unilateral hold of all the bills in the Senate before they’re reviewed by a member of his staff.

CORNYN: Well, I think it’s important for every member of the Senate to review legislation before it passes by unanimous consent. There’s a lot of garbage that gets through that should be stopped, certainly ought to be reviewed. I certainly think it’s a good idea to look at it, to read it, know what we’re voting on before it passes.

TP: But what do you think about the leadership structure if just one member can hold up the entire Congress essentially, one member could just have a whim and shut everything down, right?

CORNYN: Well, what creates the pressure is, we’re at the tail end of the session. A lot of people like Senator Reid, Speaker Pelosi want to get out of town and a lot of folks want to go and campaign. A lot of this stuff should have been taken care of earlier in the year.

Watch it:

Cornyn appears to be weary about picking fights with DeMint. Earlier this year, DeMint publicly challenged Cornyn’s power as the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and declared that he would be picking his own ultra-conservative candidates to run for office. For instance, Cornyn funneled money to his own candidate in Colorado, Jane Norton, who later lost to DeMint’s candidate, Ken Buck. While Cornyn initially tried to support his own candidates, he was eventually steamrolled by DeMint’s allies in the Club for Growth, a Wall Street front group, FreedomWorks, and other lobbyist-controlled conservative organizations.

As ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser wrote in a post yesterday, DeMint can get away with this stunt because the Senate’s rules are ripe for abuse. By exploiting the rules, DeMint can force up to 60 hours of uninterrupted debate before a final vote. Using this tactic, DeMint can require over two and a half years to deliberate just the 372 bills already passed by the House since August. “In other words,” Millhiser explained, “there is simply not enough time to get more than a fraction of the Senate’s business done if a minority is determined to do everything they can to block progress.” Regardless of national security interests, national emergencies, or really any matter confronted by Congress, DeMint wields ultimate power — while Cornyn and the GOP leadership is too afraid to stand up to him.

In a floor speech explaining his opposition to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) attacked her for refusing the endorse the frivolous argument that unelected judges should strike down the health care law enacted by elected representatives:

I was also troubled by a couple of other areas . . . One has to do with the power of the federal government and I had mentioned a moment ago. Under the commerce clause of the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court has previously basically given the federal government almost limitless powers and we’ve seen that play here in the debate over the individual mandate in the health insurance bill . . . But Solicitor General Kagan did not seem to recognize that the federal government’s powers are one of enumerated powers delegated by — delegated by the states and by the people.

Just a few minutes earlier, however, Cornyn ranted against judges who have the audacity to substitute their views for those of elected Members of Congress:

­If ­we ­don’t ­like ­the ­way ­Congress ­– ­the ­law ­congress ­makes, ­well, congress,­ of ­course, ­is ­free ­to ­change ­it. And ­if ­we ­the ­people still don’t like the way Congress writes the law when they refuse to respond to the will of the people, we have a right to replace Members of Congress. That’s the way a democracy runs, not by a judge dictating to us what he or she thinks is good for us.

Watch it:

This is not the first time Cornyn set the landspeed record for self-contradiction.  During Kagan’s confirmation hearing, Cornyn insisted that precedents he approves of are sacred, while precedents he disagrees with are a blasphemy that must be overruled.  Moreover, Cornyn’s view that the law and the Constitution mean whatever he wants it to mean is all too common among conservatives.  Most famously, Chief Justice Roberts promised “to have the humility to recognize that [judges] operate within a system of precedent” when he was up for confirmation, only to spend his entire time as Chief Justice ignoring precedents that conservatives don’t like.

In other words, Cornyn and Roberts are taking a page out of Henry Ford’s playbook.  The American people can have whatever kind of laws they want — so long as they’re conservative.

When Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) made an appearance on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” yesterday, a host asked him whether Republicans plan to embrace the Bush legacy, and Cornyn suggested that they wholeheartedly would. He even claimed that former President Bush is enjoying a revival as the public feels “fondness” about his administration:

HOST: Last question. We learned this week that President Bush’s memoir is going to be available really in mid October … Is this a plus for your candidates to have President Bush’s administration regurgitated, discussed before election day? …

CORNYN: Look, I think President Bush’s stock is going up a lot since he left office…I think a lot of people are looking back with a little more — with more fondness on President Bush’s administration, and I think history will treat him well.

HOST: So the book will be a plus for your candidates?

CORNYN: You know, I haven’t read it, so I don’t know what’s gonna be in it. But it’s intriguing when you say it’s going to be candid.

Watch it:

Clearly, though, the American public is still sour on Bush’s record. A recent Time poll found that 61 percent blame Bush for the “balky economy,” versus 27 percent who blame President Obama. By a whopping 53-to-33 percent margin, Americans favor Obama over Bush.

As for Cornyn’s claim that “history will treat” Bush “well,” the Siena Research Institute this month released its latest poll of presidential scholars, who ranked Bush as the worst president of the modern era and in the bottom five overall. Despite evidence like this, Cornyn is only the latest prominent conservative to engage in wishful thinking about Bush’s legacy, following the likes of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Bush’s former Attorney General John Aschcroft, and Karl Rove. (HT: Taegan Goddard)

- William Tomasko

The heads of the Republican congressional campaign committees — Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Pete Sessions (R-TX) — appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press today to discuss their party’s strategy for the November elections. Sessions began by saying that everyone knows exactly “what Republicans stand for,” but he quickly proved that even he doesn’t really know. Host David Gregory, visibly frustrated, repeatedly pressed the two campaign chiefs for substance, saying, “these are not specifics, voters get tired of that.” But all he got in return was vapid talking points, like how Republican candidates are “standing with the American people back home.”

Gregory correctly dismissed what he was hearing from Sessions as “gauzy,” and turned to Cornyn, saying, “I’m not hearing an answer here, what are the painful choices” that Republicans are prepared to make to cut the deficit? Instead of offering any ideas of own, and in direct contrast to the sense of urgency with which conservatives paint the deficit, Cornyn responded that he would wait for President Obama’s debt commission’s report, which will conveniently come after the election. Gregory replied, “wait a minute, conservatives need a Democratic president’s debt commission to figure out what it is they need to cut?”:

GREGORY: I think what a lot of people want to know is, if Republicans do get back in power, what are they going to do?

SESSIONS: It’s quite simple that Americans do know the agenda that is before us. They understand what the President and the speaker stand for, and they understand what Republicans stand for. Republicans…very strong, standing with the American people back home. [...]

GREGORY: Congressman, congressman, that’s a pretty gauzy agenda so far. I mean, what specifics — what painful painful choices are Republicans prepared to make? … How do you [balance the budget]? Tell me how you do it. Name a painful choice that Republicans are prepared to say we have to make.

SESSIONS: Well first of all, we have to make sure as we look at all we spend in Washington, D.C., with not only the entitlement spending, but also the bigger government we cannot afford anymore. We have to empower the free enterprise system.

GREGORY: Congressman, these are not specifics, voters get tired of that.

SESSIONS: Oh they are. They are. … Let’s go right to it.

GREGORY: Do it!

GREGORY: Senator, I’m sorry, I’m not hearing an answer here on specifics. What painful choices to really deal with the deficit — is Social Security on the table? — what will Republicans do that will give them, like ’94, there was the Contract with America, what are voters going to say, hey, this is what Republicans will say yes to.

CORNYN: Well, the president has a debt commission that reports December the first, and I think we’d all like to see what they come back with.

GREGORY: But wait a minute, conservatives need a Democratic president’s debt commission to figure out what it is they need to cut?

Watch it:

Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative National Review, called Cronyn and Sessions’ performance “disappointing” on Twitter, writing, “a consensus GOP agenda” is “badly needed…so these guys have something to say.”

In a candid moment on Bill Bennett’s radio show this week, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) seemed to admit why Republicans refuse to give specifics. Republicans shouldn’t “lay out a complete agenda,” King said, because people might not like it.

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