Aside

Another Republican Congressman sides with Huma Abedin

Not sure how we missed this one but identifying all Republicans in Congress who are taking the side of Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin over Reps. Bachmann, et. al. is something we’d like to continue tracking. It’s safe to say that Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) has chosen to employ Operation: Ostrich.

Back on July 30th, the Syracuse Post-Standard (h/t MediaIte) reported that Hanna is ‘frustrated’ with his Party for singling out Abedin:

U.S. Rep. Richard Hanna took his own party to task today, saying the Republican Party is too willing to accommodate its most extreme members.

“I have to say that I’m frustrated by how much we — I mean the Republican Party — are willing to give deferential treatment to our extremes in this moment in history,” he told The Post-Standard editorial board.

Hanna, R-Barneveld, pointed specifically to Michele Bachmann of Minnesota — particularly her suggestion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin be investigated to see if she has ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood that would compromise her loyalty.

Hanna, a businessman who defeated Democratic incumbent Michael Arcuri two years ago, said his first term in Congress left him “sad in a lot of ways” because of the growing divisiveness on both sides of the aisle.

“We render ourselves incapable of governing when all we do is take severe sides…” he said. “If all people do is go down there and join a team, and the team is invested in winning and you have something that looks very similar to the shirts and the skins, there’s not a lot of value there.”

While he blamed the dysfunction on both sides, he said he feels more bitterness coming from the Republican caucus than from the Democrats.

“I would say that the friends I have in the Democratic Party I find … much more congenial — a little less anger,” he said.

Hanna fails to consider one very real possibility. What if Bachmann is right? Is he saying she’s not right? If he is, he must necessarily overlook mountains of evidence which, incidentally, is what all of Abedin’s defenders have been doing.

Or is he saying it doesn’t matter if Bachmann is right? If so, he is taking a peace at all costs approach, which never works out well.

The current list of Republican Congressmen who have chosen to side with Abedin against Bachmann are:

Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Senator Scott Brown (R-MA)
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID)
Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY)

Please let us know if any more pop up.

P.S. We will gladly take any of these individuals off the list if they recant and admit they were wrong.

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