Eric Cantor has a hilarious new pitch for the Republican Party: you can trust us because we know that the last time we ran the show, we fucked up.
We screwed up when we were in the majority. We fell in love with power. We spent way too much money—especially on earmarks. There was too much corruption when we ran this place. We were guilty.
Okay, so even though Republicans controlled Congress for over a decade -- including during the Bush presidency -- we're supposed to trust them because they now realize that they "screwed up" the last time around? The only scant piece of evidence Cantor offers for his claim is that he hopes to "take a cue" from Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and "cut programs" to balance the budget. Only one problem: McDonnell relied on Federal aid to balance his state's books.
According to a Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis report released this week, last year’s Recovery Act provided $2.5 billion in stimulus relief to ‘maintain crucial services for [Virginia] citizens’ and ‘help close the state’s budget shortfall in 2010-2012.’ Virginia legislators relied on $1.3 billion in enhanced Medicaid funding, $1 billion in funding for K-12 and higher education, $39 million for public safety, and $200 million in general support to reduce ‘what would otherwise have been a $5.4 billion budget hole.’”
So Cantor's argument boils down to: we screwed up, but trust us, we won't screw up again, and offers as proof a transparently bogus claim about Bob McDonnell's tenure in office?
With a campaign as hollow as this, it's no wonder that Democrats are surging: the GOP alternative is really no alternative at all.