You’ve got to read this to believe it.

Well everyone, we’ve reached the end of the line. Last night with just a few procedural votes, Sen. Tom Coburn exposed as a sham the current Republicans in Washington. I suggest reading this article in National Review.

The action that took place on the floor of the senate was disgraceful to our nation and our party. Make no mistake about it, there will be hell to pay in 2006. Coburn ‘08 is the only thing at this point that would assauge how I feel. This was a total abrogation of duty and so I would ask all of you to contact the NRSC:

How to contact us…

NRSC
Ronald Reagan Republican Center
425 2nd Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002
202.675.6000
webmaster@gopsenators.com

and let them know how we all feel.

From Today’s WSJ Editorial Page:

On current trends, freshman Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is soon going to need a food taster to accompany him to the Senate dining room. Which is all the more reason for the rest of us to admire his political nerve.

Mr. Coburn yesterday took to the floor not once, but twice, to force his colleagues to defend some of their more egregious “earmarks,” or pork projects they plan to funnel to home states. The Republican dared to use the “p” word (”priorities”) and suggested that taxpayers might be better served if hurricane relief was offset by deleting earmarks for a sculpture garden in Washington state, an art museum in Nebraska, and a Rhode Island animal shelter, among other national necessities.

Washington Democrat Patty Murray escalated immediately to Defcon 1, vowing that if her colleagues so much as blinked at her sculptures she’d personally see to the untimely demise of their own projects. Mr. Coburn lost 86-13. The miracle is he got 13.

Senator Non Grata returned to the floor later in the day, this time to suggest shifting $223 million from the infamous “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska to a bridge over Lake Pontchartrain that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Alaska’s alleged Republican Lisa Murkowski responded that the very idea of refusing to spend $4.5 million per each of the 50 residents on Alaska’s Gravina Island — so that they would no longer have to take a seven-minute ferry — was, well, “offensive.” As we went to press last night, the vote on this amendment was still being tallied, but you already know how it turned out.

Rest assured that none of this is making Mr. Coburn popular with his colleagues, Republicans or Democrats. The Senate is a club and one thing that is beyond ideology is “earmarks.” They’re almost considered to be a perquisite of service, like a golf membership for a CEO (at least before Sarbanes-Oxley). Mr. Coburn is risking his dinner invitations by daring to shine a public light on his fellow Senators as they practice their everyday, routine outrages. Good for him, but he’d better hire a bodyguard.