GOP Rep. Morphs From Seinfeld Character Into ‘BLANKET Nazi’

If you weren’t a fan of Seinfeld then the episode devoted to “Soup Nazi” and references to him afterwards (even in the finale) here’s the deal. He was quick to lose his cool, and banish customers for the most trivial of innocent reasons.

The headline alone of a story from Mediaite made me instantly think “Seems like instead of Soup Nazi we’ve not got Blanket Nazi on our hands. If you click on the link you’ll see why. Congresswoman Laurel Lee of Florida, like a good little Florida GOPer is angry, because as she tells it there are Border Patrol agents “ready to fight” (WTF?) and instead are forced, forced mind you to give out blankets (and other stuff) to people crossing our southern border. Oh the horror! From the article:

Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) tore into the Biden administration over its maladministration of the United States’ southern border with Mexico on America’s Newsroom Tuesday morning, even going so far as to express her disapproval of border agents distribution of blankets to migrants.

As I’m sure you’ve surmised according to Lee the Biden administration hasn’t tried hard enough or in the right way (both actually from her point of view, and in fact “has clearly done nothing that’s serious to secure the border.”  I beg to differ but that’s a much longer discussion as to how and why she’s wrong. The short version is that she believes trying to address “root causes” (why so many flee Central American countries hoping to get into the U.S.) is a waste of time, effort and money. Oh, and she’s beating the drug smuggling drum, like the quite real fentanyl problem across the U.S. is something new. The sad fact is fentanyl is just the latest drug that’s getting the focus of attention. Drug smuggling, from Pot to Cocaine (and other drugs) is a decades old problem that’s spanned administrations of both Republican as well as Democratic Presidents. It is however the current hobbyhorse.

However, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of those crossing our southern border aren’t smuggling fentanyl or any other drugs. Do you think for one second the drug lords running the cartels and smuggling operations are going to use random migrants? Give them tens of thousands of dollars worth of “product” and trust them to deliver them once in the U.S.? Of course not. But making vague claims to demonize people fleeing poverty and/or violence are all drug smugglers, or even that a large percentage of them are plays well with Republican and even voters from other blocs.

In alleging this administration has “lost control of the southern border” (again, this problem is decades old) to drug traffickers she also tosses in “human trafficking” which might blow up soon. There is after all that Ethics Committee report likely to come out next month on her fellow Florida Congress Critter Matt Gaetz. It will no doubt cover his interstate crimes of paying for his underage sex partners online, transporting them across state and international borders, often to none other than the conveniently (for a lot of people) dead Trump pal Jeffrey Epstein. With a judge having just approved release of around 150 names, not to mention Trump’s ongoing sexual misconduct issues perhaps talking human trafficking wasn’t the smartest move on Lee’s part. We’ll have to wait and see.

Regardless it’s not like she needs to, in order to win re-election (Congresswoman Lee is from Florida after all so her seat is safe) kick up all this fuss. Maybe she’s looking to move up in MAGA world. So she’s dialed up some red meat rhetoric:

“We have brave men and women of Border Patrol who are down there ready, willing and able, who want to enforce our laws, who want to fight for our country. And instead, as you point out, they’re being assigned tasks like passing out blankets and working as travel agents to just bring people into this country,” asserted Lee. “We don’t know who they are. We don’t know where they’re going. We do know that quite a number of these people, some are even on the terror watch list and they’re getting spread out throughout America with these notices to appear that many of them simply ignore. So this is a crisis that is a true danger to our country and something that House Republicans are committed to putting a stop to.”

Lot’s of standard GOPer talking points in all that. Border Agents wanting to fight and instead being forced to hand out blanket. Or, OMFG food and water too probably. Sex-trafficking and terrorist apprehension be damned to hear her tell it. Yes, there is a problem at our southern border but conservatives have no interest in fixing it.  It’s been a terrific campaign issue for them for too long and with the Dobbs ruling the abortion issue has knocked them back on their heels so they need immigration more than ever.

That’s why, unless and until Democrats have solid majorities in both the House and Senate and the GOP is so wounded enough Senators can be persuaded to go along (unless we finally get rid of the filibuster) there will never be meaningful and comprehensive immigration reform. If anything of substance gets going conservatives will rise up in unison shouting a single word through megaphones – AMNESTY! Doing so has worked in the past and it will work again, at least unless and until as I just said the GOP is so damaged they have no choice but to go back to days of old and trying to govern. I’m not holding my breath on that one.

For now “Blanket Nazi” Lee tells those suffering people at our southern border “NO BLANKET FOR YOU!!!!