Earmarks - has everybody forgotten?

In the wake of the Abramoff / K-street / scandal talk, there has been much discussion about earmarks in bills and how they are a way legislators can "pay back" lobbyists.

Consensus view is that earmarks are bad and anyone defending them has a lot of explaining to do.

Flash back to 2000. In the New York primary between McCain and Bush, the Bush team attacked McCain, ostensibly for being against breast cancer research. That charge had bite.

The reality? McCain opposed an earmark for a particular hospital. (Of course, the Bush team didn't say that out loud. They wanted voters to think McCain was opposed to cancer research.)

Here's a little more, from a CNN Crossfire exchange on 2 March 2000: (emp add)

NOVAK: Ari Fleischer, in Los Angeles today Governor Bush was very soft and non-negative going to a charter school, but on the other side of the continent in New York, his forces were just wailing the devil out of John McCain, saying he has a pattern of anti-New York voting. Don't we have a pattern that whenever George W. Bush is behind in a state, then he goes negative?

FLEISCHER: Well, that would be funny because "The New York Times" reports that Governor Bush is up 10 points in New York State. If you're suggesting to me that politics in New York gets rough-and- tumble, well, that's news me, I have never heard that about the Empire State before. But there is a close race going on in New York State and Senator McCain has a long voting record, and includes one item, frankly, that Senator McCain has publicly advertised on his Web page, and I brought it along with me tonight.

Senator McCain's own Web page says, quote, "As president, I will cut every one of the projects on the following list." And on that list he includes money for the New York University Program Women's Center for Cancer, an earmark of $1 million for breast cancer at North Shore Long Island Jewish...

NOVAK: Let me...

FLEISCHER: Senator McCain advertises that he wants to cut those programs.

More, from Salon: (emp add)

They think Bush conducted himself dishonorably time and again, refusing to call off attacks; allowing (at the very least) close allies to wage misleading ad attacks slamming him as an anti-environmentalist and painting him as being indifferent to breast cancer; and making callous remarks after learning McCain's sister is herself a breast cancer survivor. McCain aides feel strongly that history will judge Bush's campaign as one of the nastiest and ugliest ever waged.

So we have Bush, on the record, attacking a genuine reformer in one of the most scurrilous ways possible. (There were radio ads in New York that omitted the earmark qualification, presenting McCain as just down-right opposed to cancer research. This had a significant affect on Republican women.)

Does anybody remember? (That includes liberal blogs.) Does anybody care? Why isn't Bush paying a penalty for defending an earmark with a dishonest attack on a rival politician?


posted by Quiddity at 1/21/2006 07:31:00 PM