No surprise here: With the November elections just five weeks away, Congressman Doug Lamborn is trying to claim he didn't mean what he said when he claimed that he and his colleagues were urging generals to resign in a "blaze of glory" rather than follow orders from President Obama.
In Lamborn's original comments, he said that "a lot of us are talking to the generals behind the scenes" and urging them to "have a public resignation," but now Lamborn is trying to distance himself from his own words, claiming:
Lamborn clarified to The Gazette on Friday that he was talking about old policies from President Barack Obama. He offered resignation as an option when his office received complaints from generals and admirals who were riled up about sequestration in 2013 and the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 2010.
Sure, except (a) Lamborn said he and his colleagues "are talking" to generals—very much in the present tense—and (b) he didn't say "I am talking," he said "a lot of us are talking"—which means he wasn't the only one. But that was when his remarks weren't causing him—or his buddies—political problems. Now that they are, he's changed his tune—and he's not alone:
On Sunday night, U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican from Aurora, tweeted a link to a story about Lamborn’s comments and said, “As a Marine and combat veteran, I know to keep my politics off the battlefield.”
And when asked about Lamborn’s statement, U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, said: “There is no room for partisan politics when it comes to our men and women in uniform.”
As Steve Benen
notes, those statements are hardly harsh condemnations of Lamborn. In fact, rather than condemning Lamborn, they seem more like statements aimed at denying that they were the colleagues to which Lamborn was referring.
But whether they have or haven't urged generals to resign in order to protest President Obama, one thing is 100 percent clear: Lamborn's original statement wasn't a reference to the past, despite what he's saying now. He clearly and unambiguously said that he was urging generals to refuse orders from the commander-in-chief by resigning. The only question is whether or not that was the truth, and when your best defense is "I was lying" and your colleagues are tripping over each other to say you weren't talking about them, then you've dug yourself quite a deep hole.
Can you chip in $3—$1 each—to our Daily Kos-endorsed secretary of state candidates, including Colorado's Democratic nominee for secretary of state, Joe Neguse?