GOP govs get dose of stimulus reality
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.”
Jindal, meanwhile, toned down his firm opposition and turned his focus to a much narrower rejection of two pots of money; Palin, too, has narrowed her objections and promised to work with legislators who want the money.
“At this point it looks like everybody’s on board with the program,” said Tom Gavin, an OMB spokesman.
The governors’ shifts from a national ideological offensive against Obama to a defensive damage control approach at home reveals the degree to which Republicans are still struggling to find a coherent path of opposition to the president, and the extent to which governors’ mansions — often seen as ideal steppingstones to the White House — can derail political careers in tough economic times.
Those damn flip-floppers.
Reply With Quote
