Earmark this, Teabaggers!

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So the Teabagging Republicans are so very fiscally responsible, right? And, putting principle before politics, they're so very much against all those politics-as-usual earmarks, right? Er, not so much:

Members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus may tout their commitment to cutting government spending now, but they used the 111th Congress to request hundreds of earmarks that, taken cumulatively, added more than $1 billion to the federal budget.

According to a Hotline review of records compiled by Citizens Against Government Waste, the 52 members of the caucus, which pledges to cut spending and reduce the size of government, requested a total of 764 earmarks valued at $1,049,783,150 during Fiscal Year 2010, the last year for which records are available.

"It's disturbing to see the Tea Party Caucus requested that much in earmarks. This is their time to put up or shut up, to be blunt," said David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste. "There's going to be a huge backlash if they continue to request earmarks."

Well, they're not going to shut up, but I doubt they'll put up either. They'll play the anti-earmark card if they think it can win them votes, but ultimately they'll all figure out that winning votes back home means bringing home as much bacon as possible.

But there'll only be a backlash if they're not given a free pass by the media, and if their partisan hypocrisy is exposed for what it is.

Behind the rhetoric, it's still politics as usual, just with an extreme right-wing twist.