Maybe not all of it, but some. Like the man says, having made a principled stand against the bill and lost, what’s to be gained now by rejecting the cash? Aside from setting a momentously righteous example about spending and instantly being inducted into the fiscal conservative Hall of Fame, I mean.

A tu quoque via FNC this morning:

He suggested he’s open to taking the money, saying Democrats aren’t turning down tax cuts even though many oppose them.

“There are a lot of Democrats that voted against tax cuts and yet they don’t go back to their states and their congressional districts and tell their folks, ‘Look you can’t take the tax cut because if so it’ll undo what I believe’,” he said.

Fair enough, but thanks to James Clyburn and the House Democrats, there’s a third option beside taking the money and rejecting it: Per the Sanford Amendment, he could have turned down the cash in the expectation that the state legislature would override him. That way his constituents get their pork and he doesn’t have to get his hands greasy by touching it. Why not go that route? He’s barred by term limits from seeking re-election as governor in 2010. I can only assume he has his eye on higher office, either in the Senate (a challenge to Grahamnesty?) or the White House, and doesn’t want to have to be asked umpteen million times which other benefits he’d deny to Americans in the interest of “principle.”