This afternoon, the House passed a bill to extend unemployment benefits for the next four months. The bill passed with bipartisan support, although 142 Republicans voted against it, along with 11 Democrats. Several members did not show up to vote however, including Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who is running for governor. Hoekstra, who hopes to govern a state with an unemployment rate of 13.6%, the second highest in the nation, spent the afternoon instead traveling to the Muskegon Country Club for a fundraiser. If the Senate fails to pass the House’s unemployment extension, then 90,000 Michigan residents are set to lose their unemployment checks by Saturday. Hoekstra also failed to vote on the unemployment insurance extension bill brought to the floor earlier this week.

Almost immediately after Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab failed to detonate a bomb on an airplane on Christmas Day, conservatives rushed to politicize the attempted terrorist attack. “People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration,” Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) said before he’d even been briefed on the incident. Karl Rove and Rep. Peter King (R-NY) criticized President Obama for issuing a statement on the failed bombing 72 hours after the event, even though President Bush waited longer to comment on “shoe-bomber” Richard Reid’s failed attempt to bring down an airliner in Dec. 2001.

The drumbeat of political criticism from conservatives since then has been unrelenting, especially focusing on the fact that Abdumuttalab was read his Miranda rights after he awoke from surgery. Recently, the Obama administration has begun pushing back at the GOP’s political onslaught. On Meet The Press this past Sunday, Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan, a 25-year veteran of the CIA, pointed out that he had kept key Congressional Republicans informed of Abdulmuttalab detainment by the FBI:

On Christmas night, I called a number of senior members of Congress. I spoke to Senators McConnell and Bond, I spoke to Representative Boehner and Hoekstra. I explained to them that he was in FBI custody, that Mr. Abdulmutallab was, in fact, talking, that he was cooperating at that point. They knew that “in FBI custody” means that there’s a process then you follow as far as Mirandizing and presenting him in front of a magistrate. None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point.

Brennan followed up his critique with a USA Today op-ed arguing that “too many in Washington are now misrepresenting the facts to score political points.” Brennan’s op-ed included the highly-charged assertion that “politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda.”

Republicans have responded to Brennan’s pushback with incredulity. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, citing former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen’s misunderstanding of the facts, called Brennan “troubling” on Fox News yesterday. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) called Brennan an “egomaniac.” Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) declared Brennan “needs to go,” and is no longer “credible.” On Fox News today, Hoekstra, who repeatedly referred to Brennan as a “White House staffer” as opposed to an intelligence “professional,” said Obama should “fire” him. Watch it:

On MSNBC today, Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie grilled Bond about whether the “Republican Party deserve[s] some blame” for terrorism becoming “too politicized.” Bond responded in denial, saying, “give me a break.” “They’re the ones who went out and called politics and they played politics,” said Bond of the White House. In an ironic twist, however, he then claimed that criticisms of the Bush administration’s terrorism policy during the past eight years had been “political attacks.” The White House said today that Bond’s call for Brennan to resign was “pathetic.”

Unintentionally, Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade summed up the situation perfectly this morning when he said that Bond and Hoekstra had told him on the radio yesterday that “they’re just astounded and befuddled that” Brennan “continues to dig like this and act so political in condemning everybody else for acting political.”

Days after the failed Christmas Day terror attack on an airliner over Detroit, former Vice President Dick Cheney attacked President Obama for what he called a “low key response” and for giving “terrorists the rights of Americans.”

Today on C-Span’s Washington Journal, a caller asked Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) what he thought of Cheney’s rush to judgement. “What do you think about Dick Cheney coming out and calling Obama weak like the same day or the day after that Christmas attack?” he asked. While Hoekstra said he would “prefer” to tell Cheney to keep quiet, he just couldn’t quite bring himself to do it:

HOEKSTRA: I might prefer at this point in time to say, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Cheney, you know, just kind of back off, I understand why the Vice President is speaking because I think he’s proud of the track record, it’s an imperfect track record on some of these national security [issues] but it was a clearly focused effort.

Watch it:

Hoekstra has also come out swinging at Obama, politicizing the event with baseless attacks just hours after the failed Christmas Day plot, well before Cheney chimed in. Hoekstra even tried to raise money of the failed attack.

But perhaps Hoekstra is afraid to tell Cheney what he really thinks. The Washington Post reported last May that Cheney’s attacks have “caused queasiness” among Republicans, but they’re “not willing to take him on in public.” In fact, just after the failed terror attack on Christmas, many agreed with Obama’s response but “were reluctant to say so on record” worried that “they would draw the ire of Cheney’s circle if they did.”

Just hours after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who is running for governor in Michigan, began politicizing the event. Hoekstra baselessly claimed President Obama had not paid enough attention to Yemen — the base of Abdulmutallab’s radical affiliations — and even tried to raise campaign funds off the incident.

Last night on Fox News, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the failed terror attack was good for Hoekstra, even adding that it was “probably” the reason the leading Democratic candidate for Michigan governor dropped out of the race:

GINGRICH: In Michigan, I think Pete Hoekstra is putting together such a good campaign and has gotten such a boost out of having been intelligence committee chairman now with the attempted attack on Detroit that Pete really is becoming a dominant figure in the state.

I think that was part of why Lt. Governor Cherry probably dropped out. He’s faced with a president who clearly couldn’t have defended Detroit. We were lucky that the terrorist didn’t know how to set off the bomb or we would have had a huge disaster.

Watch it:

Republicans have no shame in playing politics with terrorism and have a habit of leading on that terror attacks and serious national security crises are good for their side, a point exemplified by a comment from Charlie Black, top aide to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ), during the 2008 presidential campaign:

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.

For the past few days, Republicans such as Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and former Bush adviser Karl Rove have been aggressively criticizing the Obama administration’s response to the failed terrorist attack on Christmas Day. “I’m disappointed it’s taken the president 72 hours to even address this issue,” said King on Monday. As ThinkProgress and others have noted, such attacks are supremely hypocritical considering that no Republicans complained when it took President Bush six days to comment on the similarly failed shoe bomber attack. But according to Politico, King and Hoekstra won’t concede that they’re holding Obama to a double standard:

The Democrats’ counterattack is aimed largely at two Republican congressmen who have been particularly critical of Obama, Reps. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) and Peter King (R-N.Y.). But neither GOP lawmaker will concede applying a double standard to Obama. [...]

Asked Tuesday about how Obama’s response differed from Bush’s, King said it was his “recollection” that senior Bush Administration officials such as Attorney General John Ashcroft did speak out about Reid’s case soon after he was arrested. However, POLITICO could not locate any public comment from Ashcroft before he held a press conference when Reid was indicted nearly a month later.

“My point was there was no word coming from anyone except a press handout,” King told POLITICO Tuesday. “It didn’t have to be the president. I’d have been fine if it were Eric Holder or for that matter [Homeland Security Secretary Janet] Napolitano….There should be a face for the administration. For the first 48 hours, nobody said a word.”

Though he pointed out Hoekstra and King’s hypocrisy, Politico’s Josh Gerstein claimed that “former Bush aides and advisers have sidestepped the issue or endorsed Obama’s approach.” But in a statement given to a different Politico reporter, former Vice President Dick Cheney harshly criticized Obama’s “low key response“:

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

Cheney’s claim that the Obama administration’s response to the attempted airline bombing is “trying to pretend we are not at war” is especially hypocritical because one of the Bush administration’s first public comments on the 2001 attempted shoe bombing specifically called it a “law enforcement” issue. At a press conference five days after the incident, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld brushed off questions about Richard Reid’s failed bombing by saying, “That’s a matter that’s in the hands of the law enforcement people and not the Department of Defense.” “And I don’t have anything I would want to add,” said Rumsfeld.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), the ranking member on the House intelligence committee and a candidate for governor of Michigan, is continuing his efforts to score political points off the attempted Christmas day airline bombing. In a fundraising letter acquired by the Grand Rapids Press, Hoekstra writes, “Barack Obama’s policies may impress the ‘Blame America First’ crowd at home and his thousands of fans overseas, but they sure don’t do anything to protect our families in Michigan or the rest of America.” To justify this attack of treasonous presidential behavior, Hoekstra claimed Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said “the system worked”:

They just don’t get it. The system didn’t “work” here. Far from it! It is insulting that The Obama administration would make such a claim, but then again, these are the same weak-kneed liberals who have recently tried to bring Guantanamo Bay terrorists right here to Michigan!

In fact, Napolitano said that “the system” worked “once the incident occurred” — referring only to the post-incident response — a comment similar to ones made by the Bush administration. She has since made clear that the system of preventing such attacks “did not work.” “If you agree that we need a Governor who will stand up the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security,” Hoekstra writes, “please make a most generous contribution of $25, $50, $100 or even $250 to my campaign.”