Politics in the run-up to elections has long been its own silly season, but it could also be called the mean season. Take the latest attacks by Republican Zach Wamp against jobless people, and by his fellow GOP gubernatorial aspirant Ron Ramsey against Muslims.
Or consider the nine Tennessee legislators, including our delegation’s Richard Floyd and Jim Cobb, who felt compelled to fly to Arizona on Thursday. They joined seven other Tennessee lawmakers in delivering a copy of the Legislature’s nonbinding resolution (a truly worthless document) in support of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, which would enforce police profiling of brown-skinned people and those with a foreign accent.
Mr. Wamp’s blast at jobless benefits for unemployed workers is surprisingly heartless and cruel to Americans thrown out of work by the recession that has wrecked the economy since Wall Street’s financial implosion nearly two years ago.
Mr. Wamp delivered his fusillade earlier this week in a teleconference call with Tennessee members of the National Federation of Independent Businesses. If he were elected governor, he said, he and business leaders and state lawmakers “must resist … any more mandates to small business to help the unemployed.”
The extension of federal unemployment benefits “is creating a culture of dependence which we do not need,” he said. “We want people out there scraping and clawing and looking for work, and not just sitting back waiting. And so we’ve got to not allow any more mandates.”