Lone Republican On Pelosi Mideast Trip: "Can't Do This Stuff Behind The Desk"

[DeSwiss]

SOURCE: Washington Post

Bridging a Divide -- and Crossing an Ocean

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 24, 2007; A19

David L. Hobson, a nine-term House member from Ohio, is becoming the token Republican. In January, he was the lone Republican on a congressional trip to Iraq led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

<snip>

Vice President Cheney called Pelosi's trip "bad behavior." House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) said Pelosi traveled to Syria "for one reason, and that is to embarrass the president." And Rep. Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican who serves as chief deputy minority whip, wrote in an essay for a conservative journal that Pelosi "and many of her Democratic allies have become so drunk with grandiose visions of deposing Bush that they break bread with terrorists and enemies of the United States." All that rancor irritated Hobson, a solid Republican who is well regarded within his party.

<snip>

It is important for lawmakers from both parties to travel together to lend credibility to the trip and present a cohesive message to foreign governments, Hobson said. "When we're outside the country, we should be putting forth a bipartisan foreign policy -- and we did," he said. "There could be misconceptions in the region that because we are divided over the supplemental, there are also divisions on the war on terror. "But the speaker told the Syrians we are united that Syrians should not support terrorists going into Iraq and should work for peace with Israel," he said. "It's important to have somebody from the other party along to say, yes, that's what she said."

<snip>

Hobson, who serves on the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, has been to Iraq five times. When Republicans controlled Congress, he took trips with Pelosi and Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a fierce critic of the Iraq war, and got to know both well.

"You can't do this stuff behind the desk in Washington," Hobson said of making spending decisions involving military actions. "On this trip, I'd never been to any of the countries I went to, and I wanted to understand them." Foreign travel gives members from opposite parties a chance to get to know one another, Hobson said. That is lacking in Washington these days, he said.

"I learned that Keith Ellison is a nice young man -- he and his wife," said Hobson, referring to the freshman Democrat from Minnesota, who is the first Muslim elected to Congress and was part of the delegation.

<snip>

While Republican leaders lit into Pelosi for taking the trip, Hobson said he has not suffered any criticism from his party. "I don't care about that -- my job is to represent the people of my district and my country," he said, spoken with the confidence of an incumbent who won 61 percent of the vote in November in his district, which forms a horseshoe around Columbus.

"Rather than playing politics, there's a more serious problem here, and that is: How do we get peace in this area?" said Hobson, who was elected to Congress in 1990. "A huge problem is Lebanon and the Palestinians, and it's all being lost in politics."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/23/AR2007042301764_pf.html

[gratuitous]

1. Hobson is clearly a madman who must be stopped

Where would the modern Republican party be today if they actually found things out for themselves rather than taking their orders from the collective? Keith Ellison is a nice young man? But he's a Muslim! Doesn't Hobson listen to Faux News?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Just goes to show

that sane, courteous Republicans are not extinct.

[JNelson6563]

3. It gives one reason for hope, doesn't it?

:toast:

[TwilightGardener]

4. He'll be chased out. Rove is watching, and finding a Bushbot to

challenge his seat as we apeak.