Renee + microphone = one hot mess

It’s always an adventure when you put a camera and / or microphone in front of US Rep. Renee Ellmers.  She’ll berate her constituents on camera.     She’ll get into a knock-down, drag-out cat-fight with syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham.

On Friday, she went on the Bill LuMaye Show — North Carolina’s home of the softball interview.  But, Nurse Ratchet got blind-sided.  LuMaye apparently ate a heavy dose of Wheaties and conducted the kind of interview we here at Haymaker HQ would have. 

I’ll have to admit listening to the interview hurt my head.  LuMaye spent most of time trying to talk, while Ellmers babbled non-stop, and incoherently, in the background. You can thank me for listening to the interview, so YOU don’t have to.  Here we go with some of the, um, highlights.

LuMaye started off by asking Ellmers why the GOP pushed a deal that gave the Democrats — thoroughly crushed in November — everything they wanted for a full year, rather than a simple, short continuing resolution.  Quoth Renee:

“That’s the key right there. No, the majority has not taken control yet.  So, we have to buy time until that point.  So, what we did was pas the appropriations bills. You know, these appropriations bills are all the work that has been done over this Congress is appropriations.”

Yes, you read that right.  Her quotes have been transcribed from tape for this column.  In some cases, we had to replay her three times to make sure we heard it correctly. Hey.  We’ve got MORE: 

[…] “So, this is funding the agencies at the level we believe is adequate, which is keeping to the Ryan-Murray budget, but also adding in the one additional piece where we add no additional funding into the new year for homeland security. So, we passed the continuing resolution for homeland security which is in fact addressing the issue of the president coming forward and saying he’s going to pass his own executive amnesty. So, what we’ve done is we froze their spending so he cannot implement his executive amnesty but at the same time we actually ended funding for CIS  which is the agency that would be in control of that. So, we’re holding the president from doing what he was promising to do – saying that we hadn’t addressed the issue — taking control of this with executive action. But at the same time, funding the federal government into 2015. That’s the way the process is supposed to work.” [..]

Um, NOPE. No, it’s not.  Then, mind-blowingly, Ellmers proceeds to shoot down her own argument in favor of the continuing resolution:

“A continuing resolution only continues funding and the president has all the ability to address agencies and tell them where to put the funding rather than the House and Senate doing it.”

So, if you give Obama a continuing resolution on homeland security, he can simply move money around to fund amnesty — even if you haven’t given him any “additional” money?  (Renee later describes a CR as “a blank check for the president.”) 

LuMaye talked about how proud he was to see GOPers giving ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber pure hell this week.  He then said he was dismayed to see all of those Republicans turn around and vote for the CRomnibus that funds ObamaCare. Ellmers responded by saying that claims the CRomnibus funded ObamaCare  are “flat out wrong.” Quoth Nee-Nee:

“We got elected to govern. We didn’t get elected to go in and shut down the federal government. That doesn’t help. That doesn’t change anything. That doesn’t move anything forward. […]  We have to position ourself to be in the strongest place when we move into the new year.”

Oh, you mean like $18 trillion in debt? 

LuMaye asked her — while she babbled over him in the background — if Republicans gave away any possible leverage they might have against the president by backing CRomnibus.  Quoth the nurse:

“We have not had control of the purse.”

(Gee.  We rhymed there.)  Actually, you have — for FOUR YEARS.    MORE: 

“If all we did was pass a continuing resolution, then we get in the new year — we’re already just looking back and we’re trying to figure out the funding for the new fiscal year of 2015.”

Wow.  That sounds like a real budgeting process.  *And we certainly can’t have THAT.*

The conversation turned to amnesty, and the claws came out:

BL: “So, you’re doing the Chamber’s bidding in Washington, and not the folks who sent you there?”

RE: “We’ve had this conversation, and you fought me on that. You continuously said if you support immigration reform, you support amnesty. It’s absolutely wrong. And I will continue to tell you I don’t support amnesty.”[…]

BL: “How are you going to stop him now that you’ve funded the government?”

RE: “We have funded the government so we can continue to give seniors their social security checks, that we can continue to fund Medicare, that we can continue to fund our military, and our military families and veterans. You know, those tings are also part of what we have as a responsibility.[…]  This idea that we are just supposed to be reactive to what the president does is absolutely absurd.”

BL: It’s absolutely absurd the president of the United States is actually whipping up votes for a Republican budget.”

[…] RE: “Is shutting down the government an option? Yes.  I can go to Washington and not do my job.  And I can go to Washington and just vote no.  That’s the easiest thing I can do. What’s really hard is governing. The president put us in this situation and we have two more years of him.”

Ellmers continued to lecture LuMaye and the rest of us “know-nothings” about how the way things are in DC:

“We just got the majority. We will continue to take away funding for ObamaCare. The idea that we’re supposed to get out there and fight the president on everything is not good for the American people. The American people want to see us moving forward and getting something done.”

*Sigh*.  Ladies and gentlemen, meet YOUR Republican Party.