eh, i don't get it. inhofe actually says that speeding up the project is "great news", and that the funds for the project were "necessary". doesn't seem like a slam dunk. you can have an honestly good project funded with "dirty" money from an ill-conceived program; but that doesn't make the good project any less necessary or its speedy completion a bad thing.

the original inhofe article is here

meh, i prefer to get my new analysis from the daily show.

^ The point is, Inhofe is part of the crowd that will say on the Senate floor that the Stimulus was either a) a corrupt payback to liberal donors, b) a socialist plot to destroy the free market, or c) won't have any beneficial effect on the job market, even temporarily.

To then say it was "necessary" undercuts all of those things.

It's only a mild approval, but that's all it takes to be a big fat hypocrite when your normal rhetoric is so very toxic.

I don't think that it is quite as cut and dry as Maddow makes it seem here. The republicans may have been against the stimulus, but then it happened. All those tax dollars that they didn't want to see get spent DID, or at least they got earmarked for the purpose of the stimulus.

At that point, as a legislator, I suppose that one could say "NO! That is dirty money, and my state will have none of it!" But, that wouldn't really serve a practical purpose, and it would be political suicide.


Lets say you pool together with 9 friends to buy lottery tickets. Some of the group want any winnings to be split evenly 10 ways. Some want the individual holder of the ticket to get 50% of the winnings, and to split the other half among the remaining 9 members of the group. There is some debate about which method to agree to, and you decide that you like the second system where you would get 50% of the money if your ticket wins or 4.5% if another member's ticket wins. However, you are in the minority -- 6 people in the group prefer an even divide. Rather than scrapping the whole idea, your faction bows to the majority and goes along with the even divide plan.

The lottery rolls around, and one of your 9 friends has a winning ticket. You step up and ask for your 10% of the winnings, but your friend calls you a dirty, cheating hypocrite because before, you said that you would prefer the method whereby you would only be walking away with 4.5% of the winnings. Would you roll over, say "my bad", and take the lower amount even though you eventually agreed to the even divide plan? I doubt it.


I think that some of the specific examples that Maddow cites here actually are rather hypocritical stances taken by these republicans. But it is not hypocritical at ALL for a legislator who disagreed with the idea of the stimulus to ask for and demonstrate how stimulus funds can be used in their state. Their constituents paid the taxes that created the funds, just like the taxpayers in blue states. Trying to make the best out of a program, plan, or situation that you find to be flawed doesn't make you a hypocrite, it makes you practical.

I should note that I'm not personally particularly strongly pro or anti-stimulus, or pro or anti republican or democrat. I think the republicans have been making a lot of bone-headed moves recently that are extremely worthy of criticism, but this instance of "republican hypocrisy" is by no means anywhere near the forefront.