GOP Govs Get Dose Of Stimulus Reality

[sabra]

Source: CBS News/Politico

Politico: Republicans Who Initially Threatened To Decline Federal Funds Have Backed Down Amid Home-State Criticism

(The Politico) This story was written by Ben Smith.The list of governors threatening to decline federal stimulus money last month read like a list of Republicans considering running for president in 2012: Governors Mark Sanford, Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin led the anti-stimulus charge.

But what began with a bang is ending with something closer to a whimper. All three of those governors have been forced to scale back their expectations, to varying degree, as the push of conservative philosophy gave way to the pull of political reality.

All three found that praise from the conservative movement in Washington meant nothing to furious state legislators of both parties. And in the end, along with other conservative Republican governors, the three submitted letters in recent days asking to be eligible for federal funds, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget confirmed.

“We’ve tried to compromise in a variety of different ways and now we’ve gotten to … a position well past the halfway mark,” Sanford told POLITICO in an interview, conceding that, “I got beaten up pretty bad on it.”

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/09/politics/politico/main4933113.shtml?tag=topHome;topStories

[goclark]

1. Yea for the citizens that have to endure them daily nt

[sinkingfeeling]

2. “I got beaten up pretty bad on it.” So sad. Awwwwwww

[ailsagirl]

4. Selfish fools

:nopity:

[gratuitous]

12. A self-inflicted beating, at that

"Why are you hitting yourself?"

A quote from big brothers to little brothers from time immemorial.

[DFW]

3. “I got beaten up pretty bad on it.” It must have come as a great shock to him.

All those people out of work, some out of home, and with no food or health care, and they're
complaining about their governor refusing some federal relief because it came from a Democratic
administration? I think if I had found myself in a situation, I would have jumped at the chance
to beat up my governor, but I'm not there, and maybe I'd let him off if he let me live for free
with him in the governor's mansion.........

[Alcibiades]

11. Especially in SC

SC never met a federal dollar it didn't like, but this apparently only applies to the siting of nuclear facilities and military bases.

They need the money down there. It's like the 3rd world, but with lower educational standards.

[DFW]

16. I've heard

The only part of SC I know is Charleston, and from I can tell it is no more typical of the rest of SC than Manhattan is of New York State.

[Alcibiades]

20. My mother's father's side of the family hails from Charleston

It's a nice town. It has its problems, but its rich history, coastal location, architecture, etc., make it a nicer place to live than the rest of the state, and the presence of a lot of really affluent people, both native Sandlappers and Yankees, make it less economically vulnerable than much of the rest of the state. It's also a pretty idiosyncratic place, for a lot of reasons.

The government of SC has been a Republican monopoly pretty much for my entire lifetime. They have bungled and mismanaged the government of a state that should have enjoyed much of the boom that the rest of the south has seen, but has not, mainly because of the ineptitude of the Republican ruling elite. Public education has gone downhill since I was a student many years ago, mainly because of failed Republican social experiments. It's only been fairly recently that they have tried to improve the state's public universities, because ACC basketball is more important than academics.

If you compare SC to NC, it's an illustration of what uncontested Republican electoral dominance can do to a state. NC did not, 40 years ago, enjoy too many advantages over SC 40 years ago, but now it does, mainly because it has not been run by folks who are apeshit crazy. Those folks have nothing to worry about, though--even when SC does elect a Democrat, as it did in 1999, he turns out to be feckless and fails to win reelection. But mainly they don't elect any Democrats, because so many of the white folks there were George Wallace types who left our party because of their own bigotry.

I don't miss those folks at all. They can all go get good and drunk and crash their bass boats on Lake Murray, or eat too much BBQ and get heart attacks for all I care.

[izquierdista]

22. Comparing SC to the third world

After having lived in SC for 7 years and in a couple of "third world" countries, I can say that the people in the third world countries are nicer. The people in SC are too busy proclaiming their moral and materialistic superiority from the bottom of the hole that they keep on digging.

[Alcibiades]

29. There are some good folks down there

but more than the usual number of antisocials. I think it's the spankings.

[DFW]

28. A friend of mine once actually ran for governor of SC

Of course, he is a Democrat, and lost!

[AlexDeLarge]

19. They also have

one of the top unemployment rates in the country. But, I guess, to this governor, political capital seemed to be worth more than actual capital. Unfortunately, for him, to the people in his state money is money no matter who's doing the giving.

[Cary]

5. I have just likened Republicans to a rotting corpse, on another board.

"The push of conservative philosophy," it seems to me, is a cancer and Republicans are trying to revive the rotting corpse with the very cancer that killed them?

[madmom]

6. "revive the rotting corpse with the very cancer that killed them?" ..

can you say ronnie raygun?

[dogfacedboy]

8. Rightists lick the corpse of Reagan as a religious rite. n/t

[DKRC]

13. A little too descriptive this morning

BLECH!

[ShockediSay]

26. Reagan had faith! Blind faith and DUMB luck

Can't be beat

[bluestateguy]

7. Which Republican governors have NOT played political games w/ the stimulus money?

Those that come to mind:

Crist (FL)
Schwarzenegger (CA)
Douglas (VT)
Rell (CT)
Hoeven (ND)
Lingle (HI)

Someone correct me if I am wrong or missing someone.

[Texano78704]

9. Didn't Schwarzenegger

say he would take any stimulus money that was rejected by other governors?

[Lucky Luciano]

18. Don't know if he said it, but it would be a very logical move given

CA's massive budget deficit and how hard the state was hit by the housing crisis and the recession overall. Schwarzenegger is among the least offensive of the R governmors. He at least can be reasoned with it seems even if he is clearly not in any way like a progressive democrat.

[NoName Left]

15. I'm in Indiana...and I THINK (correct me if I'm wrong here)...

that Mitch Daniels has been among the republican governors accepting stimulus money without a peep.

[checks-n-balances]

23. Yeah, you missed Sonny Perdue, R-GA

I think he's accepting most of the stimulus $ but not the unemployment funds.

Thank God he's not eligible for re-election in '10.

[Alcibiades]

10. perhaps they fear that they will join the ranks of the jobless

One can only hope.

Sanford is a turd.

[Jakes Progress]

14. But they got what they wanted.

When their elections come up, they will trumpet that they stood against the evil liberals. And the fools that vote for those kinds of asses will nod their huge empty heads and vote for them again.

You must remember, they are courting the votes of idiots with no reasoning and no memory -- you know - republicans.

[Arkana]

25. No one's going to give a shit that they stood up to the "evil LIBRULS"

because it meant more folks losing their jobs and the state going more bankrupt--in the end, it is ALWAYS the economy.

[Jakes Progress]

27. We differ in our esteem for the reasoning power

of republicans. My contention is that they are perfectly capable of looking at the facts and deciding that their problems all belong to Obama and that their brave governor was trying to stand up to the commies that put them in this mess. That is the level of their rational powers. By the time the election gets here, the media and the pundits and the am radio assholes will have convinced those idiots that this whole thing was the Democrats fault. Those governors will proudly show themselves trying to stop the "wasteful spending" of the federal government. Lies don't bother them. Their voters will pound their chests in furor that Obama got them into such a mess. Thought doesn't enter into their decisions. Remember. These people voted for bush -- twice.

[Javaman]

17. more of the "shoot their mouths off first and take questions later" crew. nt

[The River]

21. One State Is Still Holding Out

The Great "State of Denial"
which is inhabited by nothing
but hard-core republikins.

[Arkana]

24. As well they should be.

Those fuckers paid the price for playing politics with people's jobs.