When Republicans Attack

Anyone smell a lame duck cooking?

Newt Gingrich:

"If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"

Current members of Congress:

Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, who chairs a subcommittee on homeland security.

"There has to be a plan in place—along with adequate resources— to be able to evacuate people, or at least provide relief supplies before panic sets in," Kyl said. "None of this appears to have been done in Louisiana."

Republican Mark Foley, a congressman from Florida, unsuccessfully called upon Bush to bring back from Iraq National Guard units whose states were devastated by Katrina.

Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts:

said Hurricane Katrina caused more economic damage than the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and the government response has been "undermanaged" and "an embarrassment."

..."No one can be happy with the kind of response which we've seen in New Orleans, and whether that's law enforcement or whether it's a provision of resources to help those in need, it has been an undermanaged setting," Romney said. "And I look at (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and I shake my head and wonder why it's taken so long to get supplies to people that are in the Superdome."

Romney compared Katrina to the 9/11 attacks. Guess which was worse?

"It's not even in the same order of magnitude," Romney declared. "In 9/11, New York was hit with massive loss of life and yet four or five blocks away, people could still buy food, the water wasn't interrupted, the energy wasn't interrupted, the transmission of messages continued. ...This is a massive event which has affected hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people, a huge area, and the economic impact for those people and for the nation as a whole is still being calculated."

Senator Susan Collins, Maine:

The Republican senator leading a Senate investigation into the government's response to Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it was "woefully inadequate" and it had raised doubts about the U.S. ability to cope with a terrorist attack.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, spoke as lawmakers prepared to provide a second round of emergency money to cope with the devastation on the Gulf coast expected to total around $40 billion.

Collins said her Senate Homeland Security Committee would begin its investigation this week into the relief efforts.

"If our system did such a poor job when there was no enemy, how would the federal, state and local governments have coped with a terrorist attack that provided no advance warning and that was intent on causing as much death and destruction as possible?" she told reporters...

"Katrina was a disaster that scientists, emergency management officials and political leaders had anticipated for years, yet the initial response was woefully inadequate," Collins said.

Senator Trent Lott, Mississippi:

U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi who lost his coastal home in the storm, said Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown's job is in jeopardy.

"If he doesn't solve a couple of problems that we've got right now he ain't going to be able to hold the job, because what I'm going to do to him ain't going to be pretty," he said on CBS.

Neocon Bill Kristol:

"Almost every Republican I have spoken with is disappointed" in Bush's performance, said William Kristol, a conservative columnist with close White House ties.

More here.