After all of the tough talk coming from a small cadre of Republican governors over the past few weeks about refusing their state's share of money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it comes as no surprise to learn that that's all it is ... talk. Because buried in the 1,000+ pages of the bill is this:
If funds provided to any state in any division of this act are not accepted for use by the governor, then acceptance by the state legislature, by means of the adoption of a concurrent resolution, shall be sufficient to provide funding to such state.
And of course the governors who have been the most strident about saying no to "porkulus" are all, coincidentally, potential candidates for the presidency in 2012. Which means that we can expect non-stop coverage of them making a public show of hemming and hawing about whether they'll accept the money that they're already spending in their feverish little brains.
The question is, will the media provide them a platform to spout off about this "principled" stand?