Speaker John Boehner has failed to visit Rep. Gabrielle Giffords since she has been recovering from her injuries sustained in last January’s shooting. It's reported Giffords’ husband, Astronaut Mark Kelly takes Boehner to task in a new book he and Gabrielle have written together.
Kelly noted that in April, Boehner was in Houston for the NCAA Final Four Tournament while Giffords was at a rehabilitation center there following the Jan. 8 attempt on her life.
“Considering that she was a member of Congress and he was the highest-ranking member, we thought he’d ask to visit Gabby or at least give a call to see how she was doing,” Kelly writes in Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope. “Our only contact with him had been a simple get-well card he’d sent a few days after Gabby was injured.”
“Maybe she scared him off” jokes Kelly. In the book he reportedly recounts an incident in the past when in the midst of difficult re-election campaign Giffords remarked jokingly to Boehner with
“a big smile on her face”: “You stay out of my district. OK. Remember. Stay out of my district.”
Boehner,who is often noted for sentimentality tears up at everything from commencement ceremonies to a speech defending his proposal to reinstate the District of Columbia's school voucher program has only sent “a simple get-well card”.
Classy fellow, that Speaker Boehner.
He’s got all those crazy-ass Tea Party neophytes nipping at his heels, who probably have little tolerance for bipartisan courtesies.
It bodes ill for DC when a middle-of-the-road House Democrat doesn’t even merit the civility of a visit from the Speaker, after being the victim of a tragic crime that shocked the nation.
The Republicans would probably organize a huge celebration if Barney Frank got hit by a bus.