Smoking gun: caller explains Stimulus as Obama plan to fund permanent Democratic patronage system

"Chicago Bob", calling into a radio talk show, explains the need to rush on the Stimulus package before anyone gets a good chance to review its sordid details. The transcript: "I really feel that what I'm gonna give you here is a smoking gun. I'm a conservative Democrat and I'm from Chicago... and I, I feel that I was betrayed. I was in a meeting after Obama got elected and I was told by the Democratic officials in that meeting that we were gonna give billions of dollars that was gonna come down the pike, our way, and what we were to do with it was we were supposed to do with it... We are gonna build an army of Democratic patronage jobs.... gonna completely freeze up the Republicans forever and ever... It's a job-capturing system, the same one they have in Chicago... everyone's asking 'why isn't that money being released until 2011 and 2012?' Because it needs to be released at a time that's close to the election, so that they don't go blow the money and spend it. So they're gonna hold some back and that's where... the real bucks will be spent, right up close to the election. ...It's not a stimulus package, it's not pork! It's a job patronage system... there's gonna be more [people] working for the Democrats in a patronage system than the United States Army... Source: Director Blue (read the whole thing) I've tried to tell the Republican party that the election of Obama portends a complete overhaul of the political system in this nation, and that chances are slim that we will be able to get it back in four years. If the Republicans in the Senate do not grow a spine, our Republic is gone forever.

North Carolina has had a patronage system for a very long time, and the majority of elected Republicans play along with it.