The headline at Politico is "GOP Rushes to Clean Up Joe Barton Mess"; elected officials and others continue to distance themselves from Joe Barton's apology to BP, and there's a suggestion that he may still lose his place of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, even after his apology for the apology.
But that doesn't mean the entire right is ready to renounce Barton's original message. Far from it. Righty bloggers and lower-profile propagandists are telling their ideological soul mates that Barton was right the first time.
Lucianne.com this morning (click to enlarge):
MacRanger of the blog Macsmind:
Barton’s Right – Shut up Boehner – It was a Shakedown
Getting a bit tired of our ineffective and guy shy leadership that seems afraid of it's own shadow. This week the enept John Boehner slammed Representative Joe L. Barton for calling Obama's pressure on BP a shakedown. Boehner wasn’t the only GOPer stumbling all over himself to force Barton to apologize. Barton shouldn’t have, he was right....
RedState diarist texasgalt:
... Obviously the Republican leadership stepped up to defend Barton and echo his concern for the administration’s dictatorial tone? Right? Republicans believe in the rule of law and hate political lynchings. Right? Sorry, they wimped out again.
No, the Republican leadership just couldn’t find the courage to support Barton and what he really said . . . which was the administration was out of line to extort money.... Take a deep breath. Did you catch the rotten stench of a new Il Duce rising in America? ...
David "Fredo" Limbaugh, in a column posted several hours after Barton's remarks caused the firestorm:
Just as Obama browbeat and bought off the American Medical Association and big pharma to go along with Obamacare, he summoned BP executives to his office. Flanked by Attorney General Eric Holder, who has threatened criminal action against BP, he shook down BP into forking over a $20 billion installment to defer the government's further wrath. BP is but another prop Obama has chosen to advance another plank of his statist agenda -- this time his plan to shut down our conventional energy industry in favor of new, quixotic alternative energy methods that will succeed only in propelling this nation even faster toward Third World status.
Meanwhile, Fox Nation is trying to come at this tangentially -- in the interests of the GOP it's not featuring anything that wholeheartedly says Joe Barton was right, but it highlights a thread titled " Stupak: BP Escrow Account Could Fund Health Care" (FN is clearly hoping readers will think the BP escrow account is a sleazy way to pay for health care reform, whereas all Stupak said was that the fund might pay for the health care of workers idled by the spill who've lost coverage). Another FN thread focuses on the fact that Barton was "forced" to back down; faithful readers know how to respond to that:
The man was only telling the truth.
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There was no need to apologize. Any time a gov't offical (biden) tells a company exe to pay up or else, that's a shakedown.
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rep barton for what it is worth...you told the truth and you should stick to the truth. barry did shake bp down in style that even jackson and sharpton would be proud of. and if anyone thinks that this slush fund won't be used politically, then they are just as stupid and incompetent as barry.
Jackson and Sharpton? Please note that MacRanger also wrote, "Obama learned well the tactics of Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson well." For righties, the word "shakedown" always invokes Jackson, thanks to this 2002 bestseller from Regnery:
So the very notion of a "shakedown" is racially coded for a lot of these folks. Think they're going to drop the message just because House Republicans have?
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UPDATE: Sill me -- I'm ticking off right-wing B-listers and Think Progress has done a video compilation of anti-"shakedown" pronouncements by A-listers:
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