GOP Burned

By Baxter

Apparently it takes a bunch of sick and dying veterans sitting on the steps of the Capitol for six days and a furious Jon Stewart trashing them on all channels (including Fox and Newsmax) to force Republican Senators to cave and vote once again for the PACT Act.

Well, most of them, anyway. We've seen reports that the 11 burn-pit "no" votes were Crapo, Lankford, Lee, Lummis, Paul, Risch, Romney, Shelby, Tillis, Toomey and Tuberville. That's down from the 41 who voted in a hissy fit to kill the bill last week. (And it's another reminder that yes, Willard Mitt Romney continues to be terrible, and thank God he didn't get elected President in 2012.)

So we don't understand what any of this accomplished for the Republican Party — except to rile up another key constituency that they'll need in the fall and to be subjected to constant humiliation from Jon Stewart, who is — sorry, Senator Toomey — definitely not a "pseudo-celebrity." Jon has 1.5 million followers on Twitter. Toomey, 193,000.

And it may also have stirred the pot — and not in a good way for the GOP — on the race to choose Toomey's successor in the Senate. We trust John Fetterman will know how to keep Pennsylvanians damn mad about it, and that "Dr." Oz will be clueless as to how to defend it.

As for the rest of the 11 GOP deplorables, at least they stuck to their awfulness, unlike their colleagues who, after getting relentlessly pounded over it, voted for the same bill they opposed last week. It's hard to know who's worse. We cats HISS.

(IMAGE: The fist-bump that will live in infamy. Democrats, the midterms are coming. You know what to do.)