June 29, 2012 07:41 PM UTC

Doug Lamborn: Profiles In Chutzpah

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• by: Colorado Pols

FOX 31’s Eli Stokols:

President Obama is set to arrive at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs around noon Friday and will spend an hour or two touring the fire lines.

Congressman Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, will be with the President aboard Air Force One.

It’s likely to be an awkward flight given that Lamborn, who survived a primary challenge on Tuesday, made headlines earlier this year for his decision to skip the President’s State of the Union address.

Last year, he also apologized after likening the President to a “tar baby.”

We talked yesterday about Rep. Doug Lamborn’s joining a request by the entire Colorado delegation for President Barack Obama to declare a disaster due to severe wildfires burning in many parts of the state. We compared that request with Lamborn’s press release in April calling for caps on disaster relief spending, and implying politics in Obama’s “very generous use of ‘disaster declarations.'” The prior moments of ugliness from Rep. Lamborn toward President Obama that Stokols refers to above both received lots of coverage.

Safe to say, President Obama knows who he’s flying with.

At the same time, it’s perfectly appropriate, even expected, for Rep. Lamborn to accompany the President on his visit to Lamborn’s district. It would probably be a bigger scandal if Lamborn had not flown with the President given this history of petty insults. He can’t let stuff like that be the story while his constituents’ homes are burning down, and it’s a relief to see him put it aside.

But after all that history, and Lamborn’s now-profoundly hypocritical complaints about Obama and disaster relief, we would still very much like to be a fly on the wall on this four-hour fight.