You know how the Republicans in the Senate refused to spend $30 billion to bring the US auto industry back from the brink?

It turns out that they were perfectly happy to waste $50 billion in taxpayer money on reconstruction boondoggles in Iraq on explicitly partisan grounds. A veteran Republican lobbyist, says the NYT, explicitly appealed to the then head of the Office of Management and Budget:

“To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President . . . His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt.”

So “a show of progress” in Iraq was just so Bush could get reelected in 2004?

The irony of it is that Iraq turned into a huge catastrophe in 2004, and the American public reelected Bush anyway.