Strange Bedfellows: Inhofe, McCain

In Washingon With Politico ~ It usually doesn’t take much to get the famously cantankerous Sen. Jim Inhofe fired up — especially when you mention Sen. John McCain’s crusade against earmarks.

“He’s using one thing to make him look conservative,” Inhofe grumbled last summer in Oklahoma, according to the Tulsa World. “What is that one thing? Earmarks.”

But in an unexpected twist, longtime earmark apologist Inhofe has quietly scored McCain’s endorsement on a proposal that would allow home-state projects if they are first authorized by Senate committees.

It’s a major coup for Inhofe, who has emerged as the most aggressive Republican battling to save earmarks in a year when Congress has effectively banned them. And it’s a striking development in an at-times turbulent relationship between two hot-tempered septuagenarians who have sparred bitterly over the years — whether on McCain’s cap-and-trade bill to curb global warming, his calls to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility or his vote in favor of the 2008 bank bailout.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/50759.html#ixzz1FzjaGOwS.

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