Senate Republicans Shoot Themselves in Foot on Microstamping
By Mike Connery on 06/16/2010 @ 05:02 PM
Senate Republicans continued to shoot themselves in the foot yesterday – this time by siding with gun-toting criminals and refusing to support a microstamping bill. In turn, the cash-starved bunch has likely lost one of their biggest financial backers- billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Bloomberg met privately with Republican leadership before the vote and said he emerged from the meeting "hopeful that they will do what's right."
Boy, was he wrong. In the end, one lone Republican committed to supporting the bill. Another -- Martin Golden -- literally ran out of the chamber before a vote could be called – displaying an utter lack of character and leadership that has come to define the Senate GOP.
"This was a defeat for our police officers, district attorneys, and the public -- and a victory for criminals who use illegal guns to shoot and kill innocent people,” Bloomberg exclaimed.
The Republicans’ vote against common sense will surely cost them -- in dollars and cents. Bloomberg has contributed $1.2 million to the Senate GOP since 2003, and cut a $500,000 check to them back in 2008. “I would say the relationship suffered a major setback,” said a source intimately involved in the debate.
It may have taken Bloomberg some time, but he apparently now recognizes what New Yorkers have for known for quite some time: that Senate Republicans are out of touch and out of control.
Bloomberg summed it up best himself: “The senators who voted against this common-sense measure listened to the special interests” -- and not the public interest.
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