Barton's Gaffe is the Tip of the Iceberg

Rep. Joe Barton's statement that the deal to set up a fund to pay for damages from the Gulf oil spill was a "$20 billion shakedown" is not the first time the GOP has engaged in incoherent opportunism over BP.

Yesterday, BP Chairman Carl Henric Svanberg declared that BP cares about the “small people” who were harmed by his company’s catastrophic oil spill.

Dumb. In fairness, however, Svanberg is from Sweden, English is his second language, and he might not be well versed in American idioms. BP’s PR staff should have coached the guy, but BP’s PR staff has plenty on its plate right now. Briefing the seldom-seen chairman on the do’s and don't's of American colloquialisms probably fell through the cracks.

No matter. Svanberg’s gaffe doesn't match the rhetorical stink bomb that Congressman Joe Barton set off today.

At a House committee hearing this morning, Barton said he was “ashamed” by the outcome of yesterday’s White House pow-wow with BP’s big tunas, at which the company agreed to put $20 billion into an escrow fund to pay for the colossal damage that BP’s spill has wreaked on Gulf communities, economies, and ecosystems.

Barton called the deal a “$20 billion shakedown.”

Really dumb. Barton is not from Sweden. English is Barton’s first language. He should not have needed any PR coaching to avoid jamming his foot into his mouth with such alacrity.

“To say (Barton’s remarks) were ill-advised is an insult to advice,” Congressman Adam Putnam (R-FL) reacted. (Barton has already released an apology for his apology.)

Good for Putnam, but Barton’s comment was not an isolated pratfall. Earlier this week, Michele Bachmann (R-MN) characterized the $20 billion pot a “redistribution-of-wealth fund” – as if requiring people and companies to pay restitution for the damage they cause is a socialist plot.

It will take more than Adam Putnam’s stinging upbraid and Barton’s apology to make up for the incoherent opportunism that too many of his GOP colleagues have indulged in since the Deepwater Horizon blew up.