The backers of Florida’s governor and aspiring senator, Charlie Crist, think their rival Marco Rubio has stepped in it, suggesting he would have taken part of the stimulus.

I think they’re making a bit much out of Rubio’s comment, but perhaps Floridians will see it differently.

Reporter: If you had been in his shoes, if you were the governor at that time, would you have avoided that presidential visit from Barack Obama, and secondly, would not have accepted stimulus money?
Rubio: Two different questions. If I had been governor, I would have studied that plan a lot more carefully before I embraced it.
Reporter: Would you have gone to that rally?
Rubio: No, of course not. That rally was a rally in support of a specific plan.
Reporter: And you would not have accepted that money?
Rubio: Accepting the money is different . . . Ultimately, I would have accepted those portions of the money that would not have put Florida worse off in the future than it is right now.

The stimulus backers, on both sides of the aisle, are engaging in the same rhetorical trick. If you think $6 million to the firm of Hillary Clinton’s campaign pollster, Mark Penn, for some digital-television PSAs stinks to high heaven, are you opposed to the concept of stimulus entirely? Of course not. The gargantuan stimulus bill was the usual congressional method of lumping together the indefensible and embarrassing with the justified and necessary, and hoping the good helps obscure the bad.

Video below:

If Florida Republicans think the stimulus was mostly wasteful, I’m not sure that Rubio’s hedged answer really helps the guy who did attend the stimulus rally, but hey, it’s their campaign . . .