During an interview with conservative talk show host Steve Deace last night, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) once again showed us the art of eschewing well-established facts in favor of right-wing talking points. First, Huelskamp talked to Deace about Benghazi, where he demanded answers to questions that have already been answered, and then claimed that the lack of answers to those questions prove there is a cover-up.
“Who made the decision that someone should die, who refused to send support to protect our ambassador, the information officer and two ex-SEALS, somebody made that decision and they’ve covered it up for eight months,” Huelskamp asked, warning of a “cover-up that probably extends to the highest levels of the administration.” He also admitted that the House Republican leadership “said there is no more to Benghazi…we’ve found out everything we can find out.”
Maybe if Huelskamp listened to the hearings he would’ve learned that the call not to send special forces to Benghazi during the attack came from Special Operations Command Africa and not Obama administration officials. Furthermore, the team was told to stand down because they would not have arrived in time to prevent the deaths in the compound and their mission shifted to securing the airport.
Even a senior Republican aide mocked the “crazy stuff” coming from GOP members regarding Benghazi: “Four more M-4s [rifles] inside the annex doesn’t change that outcome. In fact, they might have just created more casualties.”
Later, Huelskamp and Deace discussed the Senate immigration reform bill where he said if a reform bill fails due to Republican resistance to creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants it would be Obama’s fault because Republicans don’t want to give him “a voting bloc of 11 million new voters to the Democratic Party.”
He then decried the bipartisan Gang of 8 for voting together on amendments, which he said proves that they want to create. “a voting bloc that is going to have an unlimited take on the Treasury and then they’re going to buy their votes for a whole generation or two or three.”
The congressman bases his concerns on the Heritage Foundation study, authored by a racist researcher, that uses such faulty data analysis that even Republicans have denounced it.
I just had a private meeting with some constituents in very difficult situations, they came here—one of them illegally and a few others in different situations—and the question I had for them was, ‘Do you think that you deserve citizenship? Well, absolutely. I said but how about if I told you that a bill wouldn’t pass unless you were just given legal status, would you pick no bill?’ The reason I asked them this is, think about that, I don’t think the President wants any immigration issue to pass unless it gives a voting bloc of 11 million new voters to the Democratic Party. I think that’s what it comes down and frankly people are going to get hurt.
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When you have a welfare state, an insecure border and you’re talking about giving amnesty, that’s three strikes. Tie on top of that the tremendous Heritage study that shows this massive drain on the economy, $6.2 trillion cost of this, this is staggering, this would probably the worst decision since ’86 if we’re going to head down this path. When you see those amendments I mean that calls out that the real purpose here is a voting bloc that is going to have an unlimited take on the Treasury and then they’re going to buy their votes for a whole generation or two or three.
