Never Waste A Opportunity To Blame The Kenyan Other

GOP crisis management 101, as demonstrated by GOP Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra.

"It's not surprising," U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Holland Republican, said of the alleged terrorist attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight in Detroit. ... "People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration," Hoekstra said.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that if this had happened in 2008 instead of 2009, Bush would be getting lambasted here, not Obama.  The differences are Bush deserves the scorn, where as Steve Benen points out, Pete Hoekstra should really be keeping his mouth shut on things he has no credibility on.

There are a couple of angles to this to keep in mind. First, Hoekstra would like people to believe the Obama administration isn't taking the terrorist threat seriously enough. The evidence to the contrary -- a.k.a. "reality" -- is overwhelming.

Second, when it comes to national security issues, Hoekstra has one of the more transparently ridiculous track records of any member of Congress in recent memory. We are, after all, talking about a partisan clown who held a press conference in 2006 to announce, "We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

And third, yesterday's pettiness probably has something to do with Hoekstra's gubernatorial campaign -- he needs to impress the GOP base to win his primary, and he likely assumes cheap shots at the president in light of attempted terrorism is the way to get a bump in the polls.

You play Peoria to Peoria, and you play Stupid to Teabaggers.