GOP Governors Hit the Slippery Slope Head First

Per Fox News, it looks like most Republican state governors are practically pleading with their counterparts in the Senate to push the "stimulus" package through, with little or no regard at all for the state of the overall economy.

A gem of an excerpt that basically sums it up:

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, the Republican vice chairman of the National Governors Association, planned to be in Washington on Monday to urge the Senate to approve the plan.

"As the executive of a state experiencing budget challenges, Gov. Douglas has a different perspective on the situation than congressional Republicans," said Douglas' deputy chief of staff, Dennise Casey.

In other words, "Well, since we don't know what we're doing, and we pissed away all our own taxpayers' dollars, and we're Republicans so we can't be the ones in charge when taxes are raised during a recession, we'll ever so begrudgingly take this undeserved federal money. Oh, and step on it!"

Then we have the wafflers, including the credibility-lost-by-the-day Bobby Jindal:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a former member of the House, said he would accept the stimulus money but would have voted against the bill if he were still in Congress. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he wasn't sure whether he would accept the approximately $3 billion his state would be in line for.

"Yes, we need some help and we appreciate the help," Barbour said in an interview. "But I don't know about the details and the strings attached to tell you if I'll take all of it or not."

Jindal perhaps can be forgiven to some extent given the mess still being cleaned up from hurricanes in his state, although his self-contradiction on decision-making seems to point to a general lack of moral fortitude.

Barbour is hilariously transparent here. He doesn't know "about the details and the strings attached" to let us know if he'll take all $3 billion pointed his way. If this weren't a big enough indicator to point to general corruption I don't know what is. This merely smacks of a guy trying to skim off the top, but not so much that he gets caught for skimming off the top of too big a pot.

At least Mark Sanford speaks out for what is right:

"It's incumbent on me as one of the nation's governors to speak out against what I believe is ultimately incredibly harmful to the economy, to taxpayers and to the worth of the U.S. dollar," Sanford said in an interview. "This plan is a huge mistake and is going to prolong and deepen this recession."

He hasn't said whether he'll take the money yet. But he will. It would be his own political suicide not to take $2.1 billion to help his state. And that is what is ultimately the biggest problem. They're throwing so much money around now that to oppose it on principle is to be accused of not acting in the best interests of ones own constituents, to be called the en-vogue dirty word, partisan, nigh on becoming the Democrat and mainstream media version of un-American.

It seems apparent that the American ideals of rugged individualism, standing for ones own beliefs, and fighting for what is right; indeed pursuing our lives, pursuing our liberties, and pursuing our properties, are falling by the wayside in lieu a the cozy pseudo-comforts of some gooey kind of statism.

As Mark Steyn so eloquently summarizes today:

In the western world, countries that were once the crucible of freedom are slipping remorselessly into a thinly disguised serfdom in which an ever-higher proportion of your assets are annexed by the state as super-landlord. Big government is where nations go to die—not in Keynes’ “long run,” but sooner than you think.

The death of our nation as we have idealized may very well come sooner than Steyn, or any of us think. To many this will seem a great happening. To those of us that are aware of the history of the collectivist path, however, it seems merely that the shining beacon of freedom that has long been the United States, may merely be repeating the mistakes of the past, trudging, in that long run, down the road to serfdom.