Republican free-for-all over taxpayer-subsidized ethanol: GOP senators vs. GOP kingpin Grover Nordquist vs. Koch Bros. vs. T. Boone Pickens vs. other GOP senators

AKSARBENT can only decipher so much chicanery, duplicity, and double-talk in political fights without giving up cocktails.
     Way over our limit, so to speak, is the current posturing over corporate ethanol subsidies that genuinely responsible Republicans want to cut.
     Read this if you like crosswords or soduku.
     Ourselves, we just like reading the quotes shaken out by all the nasty infighting.

Grover Nordquist: The reason we’re in a pickle is that Coburn has come up with an imaginary vote
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK): Norquist is nothing more than a “fly on the wall” and a special-interest lobbyist.
Norquist: Coburn “lied his way into office.”

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): “Grover Norquist has no credibility, so I don’t respond to him. He doesn’t deserve being responded to.”
Norquist: “I’m sure he’s a swell guy [Chambliss], and he’ll keep his pledge at the end of the day.”
Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE): “What Grover Norquist has just done is blown his pledge wide open.”
Sen. John Thune (R-SD): What they’re doing here is really contortion.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA): I would think an organization, in order to have credibility, has to be consistent.”
Koch Companies: "We oppose ethanol subsidies because they distort..demand and create inefficiencies...We have also opposed subsidies for natural gas...for these same reasons."
Conservative billionaire T. Boone Pickens (natural gas supporter): “These [Koch] guys are worth $40 billion, they don’t have to answer to anybody, and it is a private company and they avoid some reporting that public companies have to do.”