Congressman Pete Sessions Compares House Republicans To Taliban

Congressman Pete Sessions (R-Dallas), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, this week compared the House Republican Caucus to the Taliban,and advocated open insurgency against the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

Hotline’s On Call has his exact words:

Frustrated by a lack of bipartisan outreach from House Democratic leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said House Republicans — who voted unanimously last week against the economic plan pushed by President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — will pitch a “positive, loyal opposition” to the proposal. The group, he added, should also “understand insurgency” in implementing efforts to offer alternatives.

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors.

[...]

And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.”

I am sure we can expect a lot more of that sort of thing now that the Republicans have been relegated to minority status in a big way. Of course, I never recall any Democratic Congressmen from Texas comparing the Republicans to the Taliban when Democrats were the minority, and the GOP’s actions then were nothing short of horrific.

DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen had this to say about Session’s poor choice of metaphor:

“NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions’ remark comparing his own party’s tactics during the economic recovery debate to those of a terrorist group in Afghanistan is truly shocking.

“While House Republican leaders profess to seek bipartisanship, they are comparing their tactics to the violent tactics used by the Taliban insurgency.

“NRCC Chairman Sessions should put partisanship aside and join our fight to urgently turn our economy around and get Americans working again.”

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