Gene Lyons: Side show takes main stage

[mooseandsquirrel]

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To the connoisseur of political folly, last week's Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington offered a rich spectacle. Except it wasn't the usual sideshow barkers who provided the most bizarre entertainment; it was the headline speakers, notably Rush Limbaugh and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Between them, they made Louisiana's Gov. Bobby Jindal sound statesmanlike.

Jindal, after all, was merely pitching sweet feed to the cattle. But was it wise to argue that government doesn't work by citing the Bush administration's feckless response to Hurricane Katrina? To mock as wasteful the U.S. Geological Survey's monitoring of volcanoes? The same agency funds river gauges and tidal monitors, of interest to the Bayou State. Heck, why not throw in the do-nothing National Weather Service? Why watch the weather if you can't change it?

Just once I'd like to see one of these Confederate Republicans acknowledge how much more their states receive from the Treasury than they pay in taxes. (For Louisiana, it's $1.45 for every dollar paid; for Mississippi, $1.77, etc.) But then what's a little hypocrisy among free lunch conservatives? Jindal also mocked an (imaginary) $8 billion earmark for a high-speed railway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Then he turned right around and solicited funding for a Baton Rouge-New Orleans line.

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