Standing outside the House speaker's lobby, Rep. Billy Long (R., Mo.) reached into his back pocket and pulled out a worn-looking maroon edition with folded corners. "Like a horse, it's rode hard and put away wet," quipped Mr. Long, a freshman who boasts of never having previously held elected office.--Wall Street Journal
That's an interesting way to put it from one of the two members of the newly elected Cowboy Hat caucus. Not let's return to August 2009 out front of the earmarked and now bankrupt Gillioz Theater in Springfield, Missouri. One candidate Billy Long decided to show up at the Claire McCaskill town hall meeting to pass out his Billy Long for Congress stickers. I watched him approach the front of the line where a small businessman who built double-decker buses for tours like you see in New York and Chicago came to the McCaskill town hall meeting not to discuss healthcare but to find out how the federal government was going to help him get loans so he could keep his business running.
Well, he managed to get Billy Long's ear. If you attended the Claire McCaskill town hall, you may have remembered the man because he was the man who interrupted the entire town hall as it was winding down whining because the federal government wasn't doing anything to help him stay in business. Do you remember him?
It turns out a few hours before he made the scene at the McCaskill town hall, he got Billy Long's ear. In typical Long fashion, Long began pandering to the man telling him how he would help if he was elected. It was then my beef with Billy Long started.
I asked Billy what part of Article One Section Eight of the Constitution gave Mr. Long the authority to be making promises to this man. Billy answered there wasn't an enumerated power. Then I asked Mr. Long why is he making these kinds of promises to this man, which Mr. Long walked away from me without answering the question.
Makes me wonder how hard Billy Long rides his Constitution or if he just bent the pages and rubbed the cover just to make it look like he really cares about the Constitution, because the Billy Long I met in August 2009 was willing to say anything and promise anything just to get a vote.
While many may not be familiar with the horse term "rode hard and put up wet," Billy Long's words are very close to being sexual innuendo as well. As usual, Billy Long plays the sound bite without saying anything of substance.
