Right now everywhere in political circles the recently-deceased John Murtha is being toasted by friend and former foe alike. He was a man’s man and a politician’s politician. It was hard not to like the character he cut.
That said, I don’t miss the King of Pork Congressman Murtha, who felt no shame in the game that earned him his moniker; the white elephant of waste that is the $200 million John Murtha airport his true legacy.
Liberals sort of fell for Murtha when he became anti-war because he was continually trumpeted in the media as a real “hawk”. He’s still loved for that.
However, Murtha’s ‘grasp at the swill for my constituents because it’s my Constitutional duty’ style of politics were foolish before and ruinous now that the country’s economic outlook is so dire. If we don’t start capping people like Richard Shelby at the knees, as we should have done to Murtha, our entire standard of living is threatened. We simply can’t afford to spend this way anymore, nor allow our government to be run so ineffectually. The war, tax-cut and high spending policies of the last ten years have hurt this country’s finances greatly, and we haven’t woken up to the economic reality yet. Our leaders won’t tell us how bad it is because they are all too much like Congressman Murtha, or Senator Shelby, and because the cold hard truth of it all does not get them re-elected.
But a toast to John Murtha the man, may he rest in peace.
(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
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