Today's NY Times has a profile piece on Mississippi's lobbyist-turned-Governor Haley Barbour which recounts the ways in which Barbour's lobbying acumen --honed during his years as one of K Street's heavyest hitters-- has aided him in his dealings with the Federal government since his election to office.  The profile also provides Barbour a national soapbox from which to reinforce popular farcical myths upon which Republicans rely to misdirect American voters.  

The crux of the Times piece is the efforts made by Barbour in the wake Hurricane Katrina to get his state a dispropotionate share of the Federal relief that was being pumped into the Gulf Coast region for cleanup and rebuilding.  The Times reports:

In mid-December, as Congress was rushing toward its Christmas break, negotiations stalled on a multibillion-dollar bill to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina here and in Louisiana. Tempers flared as House conservatives dug in against the cost. It was a bottom-of-the-ninth impasse, ready-made for a heavy-hitter lobbyist.

Enter Mr. Barbour, a fireplug of a man whose soft Delta accent and gentle Southern manners mask a stiletto-sharp approach to politics.

In a private meeting that began on Dec. 16 and lasted well past midnight, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and the Republican whip, Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, questioned Mr. Barbour about the package.

It may have helped that Mr. Barbour's answers were crisp. But it was also probably beneficial that Mr. Barbour, as chairman of the Republican National Committee in the 1990's and later as a prominent lobbyist, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mr. Hastert and other House Republicans.

Either way, the logjam broke and the House agreed to the Senate's higher number, $29 billion. In the process, Mr. Barbour helped ensure that Mississippi got nearly as much housing money as Louisiana, even though his state had far less damage.

So, it appears, Barbour was quite an advocate --using his knowledge of the process and hhis long-cultivated connections to get a sweetheart deal for Mississippi's hurrican victims.  Fair enough.  We ought to expect any governor would try to do the same if placed in the same situation.  

But the anomaly from Barbour comes later in the piece as it describes Barbour's efforts on another front --economic development strategies for bringing investment to the state.  The Times, having just described Barbour's skill at wrangling largesse to suit his parochial needs, next reports on his development sales pitch:

Ever the pitchman, Mr. Barbour has also begun planning a campaign to attract out-of-state investors to Mississippi by emphasizing what he calls the "strong, resilient and self-reliant" way Mississippians responded to Hurricane Katrina. 

And there's where the myths truly get made, or at least revisited and reused.  

We have a national GOP leader who we see described as using all of his capacity to pry billions of taxpayer dollars from the federal government and into his state, making the claim that Mississippi responded to Hurricane Katrina with "self-reliance". 

Apparently, when the federal government gives out big bags of cash to states at the request of Republican lobbyist-Governors, those dollars represent the rewards reaped by self-reliance.  When federal cash goes to other people or projects in Blue states, however, those funds are "handouts", "government giveaways", or "welfare". 

Barbour's statement is doubly peculiar when we consider that his state, Mississippi, is one of the biggest federal welfare cases in the entire nation, with $1.89 in federal funding flowing into the state for every dollar in tax revenue that accrues to the Federal government from within its borders.  It's a strange sort of hubris that allows someone to crow about his "self-reliance" while taking more out of the kitty than he puts in. 

Of course, this is all of a piece with the political strategy of the national GOP for the last few decades.  Republicans like Barbour use one side of their mouths to tell the federal government how much money they'll be taking, the other side to talk about how evil, wasteful, and needless the federal government is. 

It's a fancy parlor trick they've used to no small effect.  With the help of stories like this one that seem always able to print the rhetoric but rarely able to sniff out the inconsistency, the GOP has won races by painting their party as something it is not. 

And so the myths persist.