Stimulus Hypocrisy

Here’s a photo of Rep Mike Castle presenting a check of stimulus money to some constituents in Delaware:

But of course Castle also voted against the stimulus bill. The trick is he just doesn’t say where the money comes from. The President noted today that Castle’s hardly the only one running this play:

And then the last portion of it was infrastructure, which as I’ve said, a lot of you have gone to appear at ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against. Now I say all this not to re-litigate past, but it’s simply to state that the component parts of the stimulus are consistent with what many of you say are important things to do — rebuilding our infrastructure, tax cuts for families and businesses, and making sure that we were providing states and individuals some support when the roof was caving in.

Now Castle’s running around saying that Delaware deserves a larger share of the money that he voted against. But of course this is the problem when you make a strategic decision that everyone is going to oppose an administration initiative irrespective of its content. Castle, who is 100 percent of Delaware’s House delegation and has a moderate record over the years, could have bargained for a stimulus a bit more to his liking. But he chose to join with the hard-right and refuse to bargain.