Called Out On The Carpet

I don't often agree with "Democratic Strategist" Paul Begala (Strategist is short form for Village Partisan Hack, and they puke up talking points for both sides on the teevee) but there are times when being a partisan hack is useful, and that's in calling out the other side on being stupid.

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina took umbrage at my writing that his approach to the economic crisis is to do nothing. I'll deal with his "ideas" in a moment, but first let me make a modest proposal:

If Republican politicians are so deeply opposed to President Obama's economic recovery plan, they should refuse to take the money. After all, if you think all that federal spending is damaging, there are easy ways to reduce it: Don't take federal money.

Gov. Sanford can lead the way. South Carolina should decline to accept any federal funds for transportation, education, health care, clean energy or any of the other ideas President Obama is advocating to fix the economy. And the rest of the GOP can follow suit.

It's such a hammer-on-skull obvious idea that it takes an obvious partisan to come up with it, but there you are. No district represented by a Republican should take any of the stimulus money, and no state with two GOP Senators that opposed the measure should either. They should immediately send it back to Washington and use it to pay down the national debt.

I love this idea. I think the Democrats should run with it all the way to the end zone to the point the wingnuts start thinking it might be a good idea if the GOP actually did this. Please, please, please let the hard-liner right-wing Taxen Cutten Uber Alles guys come out and say "But we think in a real sense that Mr. Begala's idea has merit."

No, I don't expect anyone in the GOP to do this. But when they don't, having both the left and the right calling them out as hypocrites on it would be really useful to the argument that the GOP is just generally full of crap.