Proving the new maxim that “There is nothing the Republicans won’t try to exploit for political gain”, Rep. Mike Pence (R-DB) is introducing a brain-dead resolution in the House in order to nakedly jab Obama for being cool and deliberate about saying anything intemperate about the Iran uprising:

Freedom in fact may be flowering in Iran as hundreds of thousands rally for democracy and free elections. While I appreciate President Obama’s comments yesterday at the White House that he was, ‘troubled by the violence,’ and his belief that the voices of the Iranian people should, be ‘heard and respected,’ it seems by my lights that this administration has yet to express the unqualified support of the American people for those who are courageously taking to the streets for free elections and for democracy in Iran.

What’s wrong with this? Let’s look to what a few rational Republicans think of bluster like what Pence is offering (h/t to Adam Blickstein for the wrap-up). Former Bush administration State Department spokesman Nick Burns said:

“President Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to see aggressive statements, a series of statements, from the United States which try to put the US at the center of this, and I think President Obama is avoiding that, quietly rightly.”

And the most important (if not only) Republican spokesperson on foreign policy, Sen. Dick Lugar, concurs with the President and Nick Burns:

The ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sees no reason for the United States to intervene in the Iranian presidential election dispute at this time. ‘Our position is to allow the Iranians to work out their situation.’

And someone with very erratic views on national security, Pat Buchanan, actually made complete and eloquent sense, concurring with the President, Burns and Lugar:

When your adversary is making a fool of himself, get out of the way. That is a rule of politics Lyndon Johnson once put into the most pungent of terms. U.S. fulminations will change nothing in Tehran. But they would enable the regime to divert attention to U.S. meddling in Iran’s affairs and portray the candidate robbed in this election, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as a poodle of the Americans.

One hopes that a day will soon come where some measure of sanity will again infect the Republican Party. Until then, praise Jeebus every day that this country didn’t elect John McCain:

On NBC’s Today show this morning, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called on President Obama to make a forceful declaration about the disputed re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“He should speak out that this is a corrupt, fraud, sham of an election,” said McCain, Obama’s opponent in last year’s presidential election. “The Iranian people have been deprived of their rights.”

“I think it’s possible to engage. But item number one is giving the Iranian people a free and fair election,” he said.