The gift that keeps on giving for Democrats: As Dave Weigel reports, Barton offered the following tweet just hours after getting news that he would not be stripped of his ranking status on the House Energy Committee.
Now the DNC can spend the rest of the day emailing this news to reporters, supporters and fundraisers.
UPDATE: Indeed, just as I pressed publish on this post, I got an email from Brad Woodhouse at the DNC, written to look like a message to Hari Sevugan, another DNC press official. The subject line is, “Hari–this is mind boggling!!” They are predictably thrilled. The email continues:
We should flag for reporters. Joe Barton’s apology for his apology to BP was bunk! He’s really gotten one over on the GOP leadership, huh? (not that they don’t feel the same way, of course).
UPDATE 2: The Barton post has, apparently, been deleted. According to Weigel, the original link in the tweet was to an American Spectator article called, “Joe Barton Was Right.”
UPDATE 3: Joe Barton’s communication’s director, Sean Brown, emails me to explain that Rep. Barton did not know about the tweet when it was posted. This was, apparently, all staff work. Writes Brown:
Since you wrote a blog about it today and have updated it several times…I wanted to let you know…I did it! Without thinking about it much, I added a headline from one of the daily news clips to a website that is, in turn, linked to the congressman’s Twitter account. Mr. Barton was not aware of the Tweet…
Now I will just sit here and wait for the next DNC email or 15 with this news. (Seriously Brad and Hari, is there no limit to how many times you can hit send?)