Oh, the humanity (unless it’s not in my district)

Yesterday, Representative Peter King from New York took to the House floor to lambast Speaker John Boehner and others who are holding up disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. “I can’t imagine that type of indifference, that type of disregard, that cavalier attitude being shown to any other part of the country,” he said.

The 20-year veteran of the U.S. House of Representatives must have an astonishingly short memory. Who can forget, for example, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor holding up relief funds for Joplin, Missouri when their town was scrubbed off the map by a potent tornado in 2011? Or Republicans blocking relief monies to 911 first responders for a year before they were finally shamed into releasing them 2010?

Want more examples? Tim Murphy has an exhaustive run-down of this GOPocrisy at Mother Jones.

Here’s a major difference between Democrats and Republicans: On the whole, Democrats are compassionate even when they aren’t directly impacted. For Republicans, it is often the case that they are heartless bastards unless it directly impacts them. Remember when Rep. King took to the floor to decry the withholding of funds from Joplin, MO? Me neither. One of the most far-right conservatives in country, Vice President Dick Cheney supports LGBT rights. Why? Because he has a lesbian daughter. Republicans are all about funding bridges to nowhere unless it’s in someone else’s district.

It’s one thing to be cold, heartless and uncaring. But when you’re able to turn that off only when it affects people in your own district? That just makes you cruel and pathetic.

And a hypocrite.