Thad Cochran, The GOP Establishment, and the Scourge of Red-State Socialism

By any measure, Mississippi has been on the
government teat longer and more fully than the kid on that
creepy Time magazine cover about attachment parenting.
According to the Tax Foundation, Mississippi has never been lower
than fourth in the amount
of federal taxes paid vs. the amount of federal money
received.  In 2005, Mississippi received a jaw-dropping
$2.02 in federal money for every $1 of taxes its residents sent to
Washington.

By 2010, that had jacked up further still to $2.47. That same
year, the Tax Foundation calculates that
fully 49 percent of Mississippi’s state general revenue
comes from federal taxpayers who will never step foot in Morgan
Freeman’s and William Faulkner’s beloved stamping grounds.

That’s from
my latest Daily Beast column, which denounces the
scourge of what I call red-state socialism, “the process by which
supposedly conservative states—typically filled with politicians
and voters who rail against welfarism in all its manifestations—are
gifted massive subsidies courtesy of mostly blue-state voters.”

It’s not just Mississippi, of course…. In 2010, states
overall received $1.29 in federal gravy for every dollar residents
kicked toward D.C. (such a persistent mismatch between money in and
money out exemplifies what I’ve called Groupon
Government and explains massive and mounting debt and
deficits). Besides Mississippi, other notable red-state freeloaders
included Alabama ($2.03), Alaska ($1.93), and South Carolina
($1.92). “Republican states, on average, received $1.46 in federal
spending for every tax dollar paid,” writes Dave Gilson.
“Democratic states, on average, received $1.16.” Shame on both
sides for bilking the system—and props to places as generous and
different as Delaware (which received just 38 cents per dollar
paid), New York (72 cents), California (87 cents), Texas (85
cents), and Massachusetts (83 cents).

Few
individuals embody the GOP’s phony commitment to limited government
and spending restraint better than Sen. Thad Cochran, who earlier
this beat back a primary challenge from Tea Party favorite Chris
McDaniel. Yes, he was in favor of all of Bush’s wars, NSA
surveillance of citizens, The Patriot Act. Yes, he fought hard to
keep earmarking alive because he was an unapologetic supporter of
pork spending when directed to his special interests.

As the Tea Party group FreedomWorks has
documented, Cochran voted in favor of Medicare Part D, the
Bush-era abomination that gave free and reduced-price prescription
drugs to seniors (without creating any revenue to pay for such
largess!). He pulled the lever on the expensive and ineffective
federal boondoggle known as No Child Left Behind, which
accomplished nothing except for more federal bureaucracy in K-12
education. He’s voted against balanced budget plans put forth by
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and others. Cochran loves farm subsidies and
high sugar tariffs.

Read the whole thing.

The GOP is so far in the crapper with voters (just 25 percent of
whom cop to affiliating with the Party of Lincoln), it may not be
able to salvage itself. Certainly if it doesn’t kick red-state
socialists such as Cochran to the curb, it’s got no hope
whatsoever.