Ex-Tea Party congressman torches Devin Nunes as 'obedient' partisan hack in blistering op-ed

Joe Walsh, a hardcore conservative and former Tea Party congressman, has written blistering editorial in the Washington Post that hammers Rep. Devin Nunes for putting his party above the well-being of the United States.

Even though Walsh didn't spend a long time in Congress, he was there long enough to get a sense of Nunes' character -- and what he saw was not pretty.

"He saw everything through a Republican vs. Democrat lens," writes Walsh. "In weekly conference meetings for Republican House members, Nunes was always one of then-Speaker John A. Boehner’s or Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s go-to lieutenants, willing to tout the party line and make sure the rest of us lined up like obedient boys and girls."

Given this, Walsh says he's not surprised to see Nunes "acting more like the chairman of the president’s reelection campaign than chairman of the Intelligence Committee" because "he wants to please whomever he sees as the person or people running the show."

The bottom line, writes Walsh, is that the House Republicans should not have anyone who is this fanatical about towing the party leadership's line in an important job such as chairing the House Intelligence Committee.

"He’s not searching for truth, he’s running interference for the White House, abdicating his role as a member of a coequal branch of government, dragging his fellow committee members down with him and exposing House leadership as ineffectual and foolish," writes Walsh. "As a former congressman — but more important, as a citizen — that’s not what I want."

Read the whole column here.