Andy Schmookler: That’s Bob Goodlatte’s story, and he’s sticking to it

At my press conferences last week, I called out Bob Goodlatte on a particularly important falsehood.  Goodlatte had blamed the Democrats for the gridlock in Washington, but the truth, I said, is that gridlock was a deliberate strategy of the Republicans to try to regain power by making President Obama fail.

Now Goodlatte tells the News-Virginian that I’m “wrong to suggest that the Republicans wished for Obama’s failure.”

What a web we weave. . . Mr. Goodlatte and his Republicans didn’t just wish – they did everything possible to make their wish come true. If they did not altogether succeed in making the president fail, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Former Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich said the Republican leadership in Congress told its members:

“If he [President Obama] was for it, we had to be against it.”

Mike Lofren, a longtime Republican congressional staffer who opposes many of President Obama’s policies, said:

“Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, declared that his greatest legislative priority was – jobs for Americans? Rescuing the financial system? Solving the housing collapse? –no, none of these things.  His top priority was to ensure that Obama should be a one-term president.”

Time magazine wrote about:

“the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House GOP whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) in which they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular President-elect during an economic emergency.”

Why do we have gridlock in Congress?  It’s clear, and it’s no secret: Gridlock and obstruction were the Republican strategy for regaining power.  Bob Goodlatte has been an active part of that disgracefully unpatriotic strategy, voting against virtually everything the President has tried to do, even when President Obama proposed ideas that had originated with Republicans.

For Mr. Goodlatte to deny that, as he did in a recent debate and now in an interview, is not just dishonest. It’s blatantly dishonest,  But it’s his story, and his sticking to it.

I’ve been saying that this Republican Party is the most dishonest major party in our nation’s history. Bob Goodlatte keeps proving my point.

The voters of this District should know: Mr. Goodlatte simply cannot be trusted to tell us the truth.  Not on this. Not on jobs. Not on the budget. Not on fracking. Not on much of anything.

Will the lie defeat the truth here in the 6th District?  That’s for the voters to decide November 6.

Andy Schmookler is the Democratic nominee in Virginia’s Sixth Congressional District.