Fantasy Conservative Doublespeak World Collides With Reality - Episode MMX(c) - That Damned Gulf Oil Slick Again

I'm always astonished, and maybe even a little envious, how conservatives can thrive in their little ideological greenhouse world, detached from the reality most people inhabit. Every night on the radio, for example, Sean Hannity launches barrage after barrage of inflammatory rhetoric at Barack Obama, who is either pictured as incompetent or omnicompetent, helpless or bent on world domination. Surely he can't be both, but on Talk Radio, he can be made to be anything they want him to be. Fidelity to sad reality is a hindrance on Talk Radio, not a help.

Because there is little check on the Talk Radio Sean Hannity's of the world, they thrive. Nothing seemingly can make them pause, or rethink, or regroup: there is no 'accountability moment', as George W. Bush used to call it.

But sometimes there is an accountability moment, at least for officeholders, and conservatism - that radical, non-conservative ideology we've come to know in the United States, where words long ago were twisted into pretzels divorced from their actual meaning - suffers. And so, even though Obama deserves much blame for delay and dallying with respect to this epic crisis, and for not understanding how dangerous deep oil drilling is, the majority of the blame eventually will fall where it richly-deserves to fall - on drill-baby-drill conservatives:

House Minority Leader John Boehner distanced himself from Energy Committee ranking Republican Joe Barton, after Barton apologized to BP on behalf, apparently, of the government earlier today.

Asked if the government was being too hard on BP, Boehenr just repeated that he believes that BP "ought to be held accountable to stop the leak and get it cleaned up as soon as possible."

Barton himself closed today's hearings by saying he's sorry that his comments were "misconstrued":

"And if anything I said this morning has been misconstrued to the opposite effect I want to apologize for that misconstrued misconstruction."

But where, exactly, did Barton come up with the idea that the White House was way out of line in pressuring BP to create the escrow fund? He got it from party leadership.

The Republican Study Committee -- the influential conservative caucus that the vast majority of Republican congressmen belong to -- put out a release yesterday calling the creation of the fun "Chicago-style shakedown politics."

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) — chairman of the group of more than 100 conservative members — said in a statement Wednesday that BP's agreement to create an escrow account at the behest of the government was "borne out of this administration’s drive for greater power and control."

"In an administration that appears not to respect fundamental American principles, it is important to note that there is no legal authority for the president to compel a private company to set up or contribute to an escrow account," Price said.

Barton is an oil industry stooge, yes, but he was just repeating a talking point dreamed up by the conservative leaders in his party. He didn't go rogue.

Meanwhile, Florida Republican Adam Putnam said Barton "owes the people of the Gulf Coast an apology, not the C.E.O. of the company who may have cut corners to produce this horrific national tragedy.” Florida Republican Jeff Miller called on Barton to step down as ranking member of the energy committee.

From Miller's statement:

"I condemn Mr. Barton’s statement. Mr. Barton’s remarks are out of touch with this tragedy and I feel his comments call into question his judgment and ability to serve in a leadership on the Energy and Commerce Committee," Miller said in a statement. "He should step down as Ranking Member of the Committee.”

Unlike Putnam, Miller is a member of the Republican Study Committee. He didn't bother condemning their official position on the escrow fund until a Republican said something dumb on TV about it, though.