This Explains A Great Deal

Get a load of this at Hot Air:

Democrats have engaged in a strange new political campaign on behalf of pork-barrel spending.  The Washington Times reports on the new public-relations battle to make Capitol Hill pork as hip as Twitter and as American as … well, pork pie, apparently.  In doing so, they not only skip over their entire 2006-8 rhetoric about the "culture of corruption," they also dishonestly avoid mentioning one important difference between earmarks and agency procurement

Talk about an audacious goal!  Making pork 'hip'??  Are they seriously so stupid that they're missing the fact that most Americans have had their retirement and savings cut in half because of the Dems' out-of-control spending over the past two months, while Congress continues to mount debt onto those same Americans through ridiculous earmarking?  More:

Most earmarks don't get released until either just before a final vote on passage, especially on "airdropped" earmarks inserted into conference reports.  Instead of a public vote on each earmark, Congress attaches them in bills without a vote on them at all.  It takes an amendment to attempt to get public debate and a separate vote on any earmark, which are routinely defeated by both parties.

the idea that earmarks spend money more effectively is blatant and hypocritical hogwash.  Congress rightly mandates a competitive bidding process for agencies in their procurement, but earmarks allow Congress to bypass those requirements for itself.  Earmarks do not have RFPs and competitive bids.  Representatives and Senators effectively write checks to favored constituents, checks drawn on taxpayer dollars, with no idea whether the product or service is the most cost-efficient or even acceptable.  And agencies have to accept the contracts without challenging such vendors with competing bids.  Competitive bidding would make political contributions irrelevant to the success of a business, and therefore would eliminate a big chunk of incumbency's advantage over challengers.

And that's what pork is: an incumbency-protection racket that hijacks representative democracy in favor of patronage systems and lifelong sinecures at the government teat.

Now Democrats want to defend that system.

And here's the rub:

It's a strange political choice, but one that would give Republicans an opening in 2010, if they could reject pork as a party and insist on cold-turkey for all the members of their own caucus.  Unfortunately, they have chosen not to do so, at least thus far, which makes them even more hypocritical than their colleagues across the aisle, who at least give a rationale for their pork addiction.

In my opinion, this is one of the reasons the American people gave Republicans the boot in the last two elections.  Historically, speaking, the GOP is the party of fiscal responsibility, but the last 8 years of GOP leadership has been anything but fiscally responsible.  The American people aren't stupid, and they don't appreciate hypocrisy, so they kicked them out.  If the GOP could somehow muster the spine to get back to its historical roots (as conservatives are trying to do now), it would be a powerful statement for the 2010 election, and one I think the American people would welcome.

Can they do it?  We'll find out.  I certainly hope they can - I believe that any hope for a free and prosperous future depends on it.

There's my two cents.