I know I’m a little slow in getting to this, but if this isn’t the definition of irony, I don’t know what is.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde campaigns against federal farm subsidies, even though his realty firm collected nearly $8,000 from the government under a program benefiting tobacco farms in the past three years.
Hovde, a hedge fund manager who is also chief executive officer of Hovde Realty Inc., has been trying to position himself as a fiscal conservative in a four-way race for the GOP nomination. He has attacked Republican rival Mark Neumann because his solar energy businesses took about $500,000 in federal stimulus money. He has also taken a stance against farm subsidies, citing the “need to eliminate the Death Tax and fight against subsidies that benefit only million-dollar mega farms at the expense of family farms,” on his campaign website.
Hovde said today that he didn’t know that his realty firm applied for the tobacco subsidies until The Associated Press and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contacted him about it. He said his company began receiving subsidies in 2005 of about $700 a year.
According to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Hovde’s firm was pulling in $2,700 a year in tobacco subsidies.
It’s ironic then that Eric Hovde – one of those “hike up your bootstraps and get off welfare” type Republicans has himself benefited from a government handout while attacking the very idea of government handouts. Not only is it ironic, but it’s also damn hypocritical.