Democrats sling the pork, Republicans sling the pork, its a bipartisan thing.
And the real issue isn't narrowly defined pork, but rather spending (whether or not its an earmark) created to benefit those with political connections. The Democrats are old hands at that.
but they were a tiny minority.
In congress maybe (although it wasn't just Coburn), not so much among rank and file Republicans, conservative writers, and other groups outside of congress, particularly as the spending increases continued.
Initially, many Republicans accepted the spending increases, with the bubble deflation/recession after the tech boom that Bush inherited, 9/11, Katrina, etc. (you could count me among that group, even if in a certain perhaps rather unimportant technical sense I'm not a Republican since I never registered as one)
But as the spending increases kept coming and coming, year after year there was opposition from the right. |
