Mike Lee Questioning the President’s Motives

This week Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) ventured onto the friendly confines of FOX News and criticized President Barack Obama’s meeting with the Senate Republican caucus.

Lee quoted an exchange this way:

An unnamed Republican Senator: “You know, Mr. President, it’s not all that helpful to have you publicly questioning our motives, publicly accusing us of wanting to eviscerate Medicaid, for example, simply because we want to call for reform or block grants.”

President Obama: “I don’t speak nearly as badly about you as some of you do about me.”

Lee complained, “It struck me as somewhat sophomoric. . . . I don’t see a lot of Republicans, especially Senate Republicans, standing up and openly questioning the president’s motives from the standpoint of not caring about people.”

Lee has apparently forgotten how, for example, in April 2011 a Senator gave a floor speech that said about the President:

…why did he opt not to pass a budget for fiscal year 2011? It was either irresponsible on one hand or deliberate and malicious on the other with intention to bring about a sequence of events that would culminate inevitably in a government shutdown.

Never mind that the President doesn’t “pass a budget”—that’s the Constitutional prerogative of the Congress. In this Senator’s eyes (and mouth), the President was either “irresponsible” or “deliberate and malicious.” That certainly looks like “standing up and openly questioning the president’s motives from the standpoint of not caring about people.”

But of course Sen. Lee didn’t see a colleague do that because the Senator making that wild accusation was Sen. Lee himself.

Setting up double standards? Claiming the worst about President Obama? Using language that demeans the President’s maturity and intellect? Lee managed to score three for three. Clearly he’s in the grip of OIP Derangement Syndrome.