Schwarzenegger Echoes Obama on GOP Stimulus Hypocrisy

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California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sounded a lot like President Obama this weekend, taking fellow Republicans to task for their hypocrisy in trying to roadblock the White House’s agenda, while simultaneously taking credit for certain programs. Speaking on “This Week,” Schwarzenegger said:

“I find it interesting that you have a lot of the Republicans running around and pushing back on the stimulus money and saying this doesn’t create any new jobs. And then they go out and they do the photo ops and they are posing with the big check and they say, ‘Isn’t this great. Look what the kind of money I provide you for the state.’ … It doesn’t match up.”

Obama said virtually the same thing during his State of the Union address, chiding Republicans that, “Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership.  We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.”

A few days later, when he participated in a Q-&-A session with Republicans as a follow-up, Obama got even more aggressive: “a lot of you have gone to ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against. I say all this not to re-litigate the past, but it’s simply to state, the component parts of the recovery act are consistent with what many of you say are important things to do.”

Though Schwarzenegger has gone on Sunday morning political shows and criticized fellow party members in the past, what was refreshing about his remarks this week was how strongly he encouraged bipartisanship – and not how Republicans’ usually understand that word, which is to say that Democrats should acquiesce to every Republican demand:

“I think it’s kind of politics rather than thinking about only one thing, and this is, how do we support the president? How do we support him and do everything we can in order to stimulate the economy?”