Barney Frank is not

Jay Ambrose:

Listen for long to Rep. Barney Frank and you find yourself thinking of his brain as a kind of non-stop improvised explosive device - an IED - that is forever going off and sending little shards of nastiness the way of any and all innocent bystanders.

The Massachusetts Democrat is maybe as responsible as anyone in Washington for the financial mess the country is now in, but you would never guess it as he self-righteously tosses out mean-spirited accusations the press enjoys to no end.

Reporters were laughing themselves silly at a press conference the other day as Mr. Frank fumed about House Republicans having the gall to balk at a fear-driven, hastily drawn up, barely considered, overwhelmingly intrusive, profoundly and lastingly consequential, budget-crippling, socialist piece of legislation providing $700 billion to buy up crummy Wall Street assets.

...

But those kinds of self-contradictions never seem to bother the angrily loquacious Barney Frank. Watch him on TV, and it seems he can barely restrain himself from strangling whoever is debating him on the Wall Street catastrophe, his blame-filled eruptions arriving every few seconds when he should be down on his knees begging for forgiveness.

Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Mr. Frank might start with apologies for the ways he once badgered lenders to give home mortgages to people who could not afford them, thereby contributing to all the deals gone sour, all the foreclosures, and then he might turn his attention to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Again and again, Republicans sought to reform these quasi-government behemoths that contributed so mightily to the troubles of other financial institutions, and again and again Mr. Frank stood in the way, taking morally superior stances that can now be reliably classified as leftist stupidities.

The establishment gospel has been that the bailout bill as originally voted on was the one and only surefire way to save the country from calamity, but at best it is an expensive gamble that hardly received backing from every expert - 166 economists with three Nobel Prize winners in their midst asked Congress to delay action until there could be further examination. Despite a plummeting of stocks, the hesitation in the House that Mr. Frank deplored was no irrecoverable tragedy.

Republicans and conservative media have started to focus on Franks role in causing this debacle. At some point it will be difficult for the mainstream media to ignore. They will at least have to write briefs on his behalf that are disguised as reporting. He can probably survive in his kkoky district in Massachusetts, but his aura on the national scene is considerably diminished.