Clarion-Ledger – Cochran courageous on earmarks
As mainstream Republican senators leaped to align themselves with tea party principles on earmarks to appease the growing conservative movement, a few were saying the same things about earmarks before the Nov. 2 election that they were before that event.
Wicker voted for both the voluntary ban and the mandatory two-year ban on earmarks.
Cochran’s vote against the mandatory ban will not be politically popular. He will draw the ire of tea party conservatives in his own party. He will be criticized for defending “pork barrel” spending.
But Cochran was courageous in that he refused to play short-term politics on the earmark issue because he realizes that a two-year ban on earmarks is no ban at all – rather, it’s a cynical political stunt designed to give political cover to those who earmarked with glee until it became disadvantageous.
Clarion Ledger
12/7/10
Magnolia Tribune
