"Mean Jean" Schmidt Follow Up

"I'll get you Congressman Murtha -- and Nancy Pelosi too!"

After laying low for a couple of days after calling a decorated war veteran (Democrat John Murtha) a coward on the House floor, Representative Jean Schmidt is showing her face again and suggesting she's the victim in the whole thing.

"I am amazed at what a national story this has become," she said in a statement. "I have been attacked very personally, continuously, since Friday evening."

Hey, what's she complaining about? It got her on "Saturday Night Live" last weekend – oh, wait, that was Rachel Dratch lampooning her. Then the guy she claimed to be quoting in her hideous House floor speech denied he said any such thing. And now it looks like people in her Cincinnati-area district also think she's a bit of a buffoon.

"How dare this idiot call John Murtha, a war hero, a coward. I am ashamed to be from her district," Gregory Moore, a 39-year-old lawyer from Batavia said.

Chris Finney, a Cincinnati lawyer who led an anti-tax group in opposing Schmidt during her recent special election, said the politics of negativity and name-calling should be a thing of the past. "People want someone who can get things done," Finney said. "She's an embarrassment to this district."

And an online poll done by Cincinnati television station WCPO -- sorry, folks, I think it's over now -- shows almost 80 percent of people saying that their opinion of "Mean Jean" is less favorable following her comments about Murtha last week.


Ouch.

But she stands by her overall position – and by her man, President Bush – with her goofy stay-the-course mentality about Iraq. "I am quite willing to suffer those attacks if in the end that policy I so strongly oppose is exposed as unsound. First and foremost I support the troops. They dodge bullets and bombs while I duck only hateful words."

Yeah, she supports the troops until they go from active duty to being veterans... Then the "hateful words" will come from her.