Oscar Wilde once said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” How apt that observation sounds today. Check out the congressional Republicans who are lauding aspects of the historic Biden rescue plan that they voted against.
It takes a lot of moxie to brag to constituents that help is on the way after having voted to block the help that’s on the way – indeed, it takes moxie to ballyhoo an historic law signed by a president whom most of them consider illegitimate – but this is how moxie curdles into hypocrisy on a sickening scale. They’ve lost all capacity for governing, so they just leech off what those with a talent for governance manage to achieve.
For instance, House GOP “leader” Kevin McCarthy (natch) got all excited recently when he announced on Facebook that benighted restaurants in his red California district were now eligible for federal pandemic relief: “Applications for the Restaurant Revitalization Fund open this Monday, May 3.” He somehow failed to inform his constituents that he and every member of his House party had voted against the Biden rescue plan that created the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. He’d railed against the plan as “socialist,” but boy oh boy those restaurants in his district could sure use some “socialist” help to rescue their businesses.
Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi was similarly enthused when he recently tweeted that “independent restaurant operators have won $28.6 billion worth of targeted relief” through the Biden rescue plan. “This funding will ensure small businesses can survive the pandemic.” Wow, isn’t that great? You never would’ve known that Wicker was one of the 49 Republican senators who tried to kill off the entire rescue package. What’s particularly amusing is how he announced that restaurants had “won” federal money – because, if memory serves, it has been a right-wing mantra that the federal government should never “pick winners and losers.”
Elise Stefanik, the new Trumpist on the House leadership team (having replaced Liz Cheney), recently denounced the Biden rescue plan as “a far-Left’s policy wish list,” but now she’s eager (in the words of her spokeswoman) to “inform her constituents of federal funds and resources available to them,” under the plan she’d tried to kill. And one of her New York Republican colleagues, Nicole Malliotakis, recently shared with her constituents a list of so-called “Malliotakis achievements,” including federal grants totaling $3.7 million to a pair of community health centers – without mentioning that the grant provisions were part of the Biden plan she’d tried to kill.
Madison Cawthorn, the insurrectionist-friendly House Republican from North Carolina, did the same thing – celebrating grants to health centers after voting against the plan that made the grants possible. So did colleague Alex Mooney of West Virginia (From his office: “MOONEY ANNOUNCES $41.5 MILLION IN GRANTS TO HEALTH CARE CENTERS”). Meanwhile, out in Washington state, congressman Dan Newhouse recently got excited about a new facility that would save lives in his district; in his words, “The Covid-19 vaccine is now available at the State Fair Park in Yakima!” But you know what’s coming next: The Yakima site was financed by the Biden rescue plan. Which Newhouse had voted against. Which he neglected to mention in his bullish announcement.
This variant of Republican hypocrisy isn’t new. It was rampant during Barack Obama’s first term, when he and congressional Democrats were digging us out of the Great Recession with infusions of federal money. As the president pointed out in 2010, “Some of the very same folks in Congress who opposed the Recovery Act – and claim that it hasn’t worked – have been all too happy to claim credit for Recovery Act projects and the jobs those projects have produced. They come to the ribbon-cuttings…They found a way to have their cake and vote against it, too.”
Case in point (one of many): House Republican Phil Gingery of Georgia. In October 2009, he was photographed handing a giant ceremonial check for $625,000 to municipal leaders in his district. The federal stimulus money paid for new sidewalks, landscaping and other downtown needs; municipal leaders lauded Gingery as their “point man when we need action from the federal government.” That was weird, because, only a few months earlier, Gingery had voted to kill the federal recovery package, complaining that “this ‘stimulus’ bill only perpetuates the dangerous myth that government spending will fix this economy.”
But my favorite episode, from the Obama era, features Paul Ryan. During his veep nomination speech at the 2012 GOP convention, the congressman assailed the Obama stimulus plan as “political patronage” and government overreach. Which was hilarious, given the fact that he personally had worked so hard to become a stimulus patron.
On Oct. 5, 2009, the future House Speaker wrote to the Obama administration on behalf of the Energy Center of Wisconsin: “I would appreciate it if you…would give (this stimulus money application) your prompt and full consideration.” On Oct. 7, he wrote two more letters on behalf of the Energy Center: “I believe they would make effective use of the funds they would receive.” And on Dec. 18, he told the Obama administration that the Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp. would use the stimulus money to create “sustainable demand for green jobs,” and to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” (Apparently, in 2009, he did believe in climate change.)
But when Ryan was shown these letters as they surfaced in 2012, he offered the classic defense: “I don’t recall.”
For Republicans, it’s actually a smart strategy to leech onto programs they opposed, and to steal credit from what others have managed to achieve. Do it long enough, and millions of inattentive citizens will forget or never know who did what in Washington. The result, as we have seen, is that lots of people scream things like “Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare!” If Republicans get their way, the long arc of history will bend toward ignorance.