STILL WAITING FOR APOLOGIES FROM CADDELL AND BARBOUR

Republicans have no ideas and can't govern, but they are absolute masters at creating phony outrages out of thin air and throwing tantrums until we wipe their noses and apologize for hurting their fee-fees. Here's the latest, which I'm sure you already know about:

John Podesta, the former top Clinton administration aide who is joining the White House as a special adviser, apologized Wednesday for a comment in which he compared the Republican Party to a cult that assassinated a congressman.

A new Politico profile quotes Podesta as likening the GOP to "a cult worthy of Jonestown" — a reference to an ambush by cult members more than three decades ago that killed Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.) and seriously injured a top aide, now-Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.)....

In that case, I think we're about four years overdue for an apology for this, from 2009:

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.), chairman of the Republican Governors Association, called the Democrats' health care reform proposal "catastrophic" Thursday and compared it to the poison ingested at the infamous Jonestown cult’s mass suicide in 1978....

"This is such bad policy for the United States, and it's going to be so bad for our health care system," the Mississippi governor said....

"I've been looking for Jim Jones and where's the Kool-Aid. This is awful, awful policy for our country...."

We're also three-plus years overdue for an apology from Fox News faux-Democrat Pat Caddell, who said the same thing on the eve of Obamacare's passage:

Former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell was on Fox News this afternoon when near the end of his interview he forcefully asserted that the health-care bill now passed is a “political Jonestown” for House Democrats and that Speaker Pelosi’s insistence on forcing them to vote yes is akin to mass suicide.

... my party is having a Kool-Aid party. I mean, we are having what I call the political equivalent of Jonestown going on here.

Find me an apology from either of guys after making these statements and I'll agree that Podesta had a reason to say he was sorry. Otherwise, it's yet another example of Republicans hijacking the news cycle to put Democrats on the defense, as a substitute for doing something constructive for the benefit of the country.