Hutchison: I’ll Vote Against the Stimulus But Won’t Turn Down the Money If It Passes

Did you see the news clip at KVUE where Texas Senator Kaye Bailey Hutchison first talked out of one of her two mouths in criticizing the stimulus bill and promises to vote against it “because of so many of the factors that are wrong,” then out of the other one when she admits that the $2.8 billion in transportation funds that would come to Texas as part of the plan is completely appropriate because “we have so many needs for transportation in Texas.”

Is there any consistency here? On the one hand the stimulus bill is wrong, but on the other hand the state needs the transportation funds that it would deliver to Texas?

Clearly Hutchison is trying to play to two audiences, and to neither of them is she very convincing.

Clearly Hutchison is joining her party’s faithful anti-stimulus movement choosing to oppose it not because it won’t bring funds needed here, but because Republicans, led by Rush Limbaugh, want to see the stimulus fail.

Because if it does, the Republicans look good. And like the “success of the surge” arguments, Republican will try to define what failure is, and then call the stimulus a failure. That’s their MO.

On the other hand, Rick Perry, Hutchison’s future gubernatorial opponent in the March 2010 Republican primary, promises to reject any and all funds that come to Texas from the stimulus bill, should it pass. So Hutchison plays to the anti-Perry crowd and criticizes that idea.

And ends up praising the bill because of what it could bring to Texas.

If it passes.

Which she opposes.

Now what is really bad about this whole thing is that Hutchison is a woman. And when I see or hear a woman make such bubble-headed remarks like that, I cringe, knowing that the advances women continue to make in our paternal society are not helped by these utterances.