Larry Craig's possible replacement, Jim Risch

The word is now that this guy, Jim Risch, is being considered to replace Larry Craig when he (Craig) leaves the Senate at the end of September, 2007.

Listen to what he (Risch) said about the victims of Hurricane Katrina back in 2006:

The governor of Idaho, an affable rancher named Jim Risch, stretched back in his chair and outlined his alternative history of the last few years in America. "Hurricane Katrina - they heaped that on George Bush!" said Mr Risch, in his shirt-sleeves in the blasting dry heat of an afternoon in Boise, the state capital.

"Here in Idaho, we couldn't understand how people could sit around on the kerbs waiting for the federal government to come and do something. We had a dam break in 1976, but we didn't whine about it. We got out our backhoes and we rebuilt the roads and replanted the fields and got on with our lives. That's the culture here. Not waiting for the federal government to bring you drinking water. In Idaho there would have been entrepreneurs selling the drinking water." (The Guardian)
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According to TPMCafe, the dam break that Risch was referring to was the collapse of the Teton Dam on the Snake River as it was being filled for the first time on June 5, 1976.

"Hundreds of millions of tax dollars went to build the dam, and $850 million in reparations went to 15,000 Idahoans who lost property when the dam burst (11 people died). Then, hundreds of millions in tax dollars went to fix all of those federally built irrigation systems for those hardy, self-sufficient Westerners who can't even supply their own water."(Your Right Hand Thief)

"To an amazing degree, Western and sunbelt conservatism is built on the risible (laughable) delusion that the federal government never did a damn thing for them and they made it on their own, a delusion that they nurture in their air-conditioned, hot-tub-equipped country clubs in a land that could barely support human existence if it were not for the federal government." (TPMCafe)

Read more here and here.

Photo: Risch and wife relaxing in Sun Valley

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