Bob Davis of the Anniston Star takes Alabama Republicans to task for voting against the SCHIP reauthorization act:
In our telling, the Ghost of the Republican Revolution Past had a busy night. He collected five congressmen and two senators from Alabama who, like old Ebenezer Scrooge, seemed to believe, 'It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's.'
These seven rested their heads on comfortable pillows and drifted off to sleep on the evening that they voted against the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). Just as slumber arrived it was gone, disturbed by a ghostly-though-familiar figure that transported the seven into a dark bedroom of a mobile home in rural Alabama, worried parents trading whispers on one end of the hallway while a small child coughed endlessly from a nearby bedroom.
The spirit looked like a former congressional colleague, an ex-fighter of ideological battles that are great for propping up the powerful and lousy for protecting the poor.
Read the whole thing -- it'll make you smile. The five Congressmen are Robert Aderholt, Spencer Bachus, Jo Bonner, Terry Everett and Mike Rogers, of course, along with Senators Shelby and Sessions. But who does Davis cast as the Ghost of the Republican Revolution Past? None other than Governor Bob Riley, who has an entirely different perspective on programs to help low income Alabamians now that he's in Montgomery instead of inside the Beltway. Maybe he can make those Scrooges turn over a new leaf and override Bush's veto of the SCHIP reauthorization, before it's too late for Tiny Tim.
