Rove Ridiculed Spending on Flu Preparedness

There's a saying in politics; "A's playing chess, while B's playing checkers." The temptation is to apply that to Democrat v. Republican issues, but it's inapt. Both checkers and chess require you to think ahead. Republicans haven't been doing that a lot lately. For example:

Raw Story:

Bush’s Brain doesn't appear to be quite so prescient in the face of a potential global flu epidemic.

Writing in a column in the Wall Street Journal in February, Rove attacked Democrats for what he dubbed as reckless spending -- stimulus money being doled out to industries "that added jobs last year."

[...]

What nefarious programs were Democrats trying to insert? Among other things, Rove cited $900 million for "pandemic flu preparations."

"There's also $4 billion for health programs like obesity control and smoking cessation, $2 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $462 million for the Centers for Disease Control, and $900 million for pandemic flu preparations," Rove wrote.

Pffft! Pandemic flu preparations? Everyone knows real health programs begin and end with abstinence-only education.

"The $900 million Rove rebuked was killed when House and Senate negotiators met to iron out differences of the stimulus package between the two chambers," the article tells us. "The Senate nixed the provision, while the House had voted for it."

See, that's the problem with being a reactionary -- you never take the time to think that maybe your words will come back to bite you. There's this huge global database called "Google" and all that stuff you write is in there. Now that we're dealing with a swine flu outbreak, ridiculing pandemic flu preparations doesn't seem like the best way to go, does it? Once again, the "if Democrats want it, it must be bad" reasoning turns out to be more than a little faulty.

A better metaphor than the chess/checkers one might apply here. "Democrats are playing chess, Karl Rove and the GOP are playing tic-tac-toe."