Associated Press

Paul Ryan isn't the only 2012 Republican with a stimulus problem.

You know it's the height of election season when one candidate is criticizing the other for doing the exact same thing that he or she did.

Pete Hoekstra, the former Republican congressman hoping to unseat Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) in November, slammed Stabenow on Tuesday for seeking stimulus money for A123 Systems Inc., an electric-car battery maker that just filed for bankruptcy. The company previously received a $249 million federal grant.

"Obama and Stabenow choose badly, A123 files for bankruptcy. There go a few more 100 million of our $s. Debbie replies Don't worry, be happy!" Hoekstra tweeted. He soon followed with another tweet: "Obama/Stabenow choose badly with $s borrowed from China! A123 goes bankrupt and our kids are left holding the bag. Enough is enough!"

You can probably guess the punch-line -- Hoekstra was in Congress in 2009, and signed on to a bipartisan effort, urging the Obama administration to support A123. "Establishing a North American battery center of gravity in Michigan will significantly improve the federal government's ability to more swiftly meet its ambitious vehicle electrification goals," the Republican said at the time. The Obama administration agreed, and the company received the assistance.

In other words, Hoekstra is condemning Democrats for taking Hoekstra's advice and investing in a company Hoekstra said deserved support.

As for the larger point, the underlying argument is equally problematic. The federal government invested in a series of American companies, hoping to help grow an important industry and keep the nation competitive globally. Some of those companies thrived, some didn't, but were it not for the Obama administration, all of those companies would have failed. Hoekstra's argument makes it sound as if all grants to all companies are necessarily a bad idea, which is a pretty awful approach to federal support of business investment.

As Michael Grunwald put it awhile back, "That's capitalism. That's lending. That's life. As one Obama aide told me: Some students who get Pell grants are going to end up drunks on the street." It's not as if those failures discredit the entire Pell grant program.

Update: Also note that A123 arranged to sell its assets/manufacturing plants to a competing American company, and production will continue, so the larger hit will be far less severe.

Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R) ran for governor in Michigan a couple of years ago, and fared quite poorly. This year, he's running for the U.S. Senate, though his campaign stumbled badly after airing a racist ad during the Super Bowl in February.

Now, however, Hoekstra has a new issue to sink his teeth into, which he hopes will give his campaign a boost: national security leaks. Here's the audio of a new radio ad reaching Michigan airwaves this week:

For those who can't listen to audio online, the ad tells listeners, in part:

"Hi, this is Pete Hoekstra. As a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, I know a thing or two about keeping our country safe. It's absolutely clear that the latest intelligence leaks that some say are coming from or maybe even authorized by the White House have done serious damage to our national security. America is at risk.

"Anybody who leaks highly classified information is either an amateur who has no idea how much damage they've done, or they're traitors to our country."

Look, I realize Republicans are worked up about alleged leaks, and Hoekstra is looking for some new hook, but if there's one issue the candidate should go to any lengths to avoid, it's this one.

The record is clear, and for Hoekstra, should be deeply embarrassing.

To reiterate an item from a couple of weeks ago, Hoekstra would probably prefer to forget, but when he was in Congress, he confirmed to the Washington Post, on the record, that Nidal Malik Hasan had exchanged emails with Anwar al-Awlaki. As Rachel reported at the time, it was a problematic revelation -- that federal officials had kept secret for a reason.

Marc Ambinder followed up today with senior intelligence officials who said there were "concerns" about Hoekstra's loose lips. The Republican lawmaker, who was routinely briefed on some of the nation's most sensitive national security secrets, apparently tipped a radical cleric to surveillance efforts and inadvertently confirmed "a sensitive capability that the N.S.A. regularly employs to collect intelligence."

A former intelligence official privy to details of the NSA's programs said that it "would appear to be the case" that Hoekstra divulged too much information.

What's more, in August 2007, Hoekstra wrote an op-ed condemning leaks, but the op-ed itself included a leak with classified information about U.S. intelligence budgets.

In November 2006, Hoekstra pushed the Bush administration to publish online a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The idea was to let far-right bloggers "prove" that Saddam had WMD, but Hoekstra's plan led to the accidental release of secret nuclear research.

And in 2009, it was Hoekstra who was supposed to keep secret his itinerary in Iraq, but who instead broadcasted his whereabouts on Twitter.

Hoekstra, in other words, leaked like a sieve. "Anybody who leaks highly classified information is either an amateur who has no idea how much damage they've done, or they're traitors to our country"? Seriously?

There's been a fair amount of chatter in D.C. lately about some leaks of national security information, which Republicans believe was politically motivated. President Obama was asked about it today, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has been trying to turn this into a scandal, even going so far as to call for a special counsel investigation.

Funny, when the Bush/Cheney White House outed an undercover CIA agent during a war, McCain and other congressional Republicans seemed far less concerned about sensitive leaks.

In any case, Pete Hoekstra, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Michigan, decided to weigh in today with a tweet on the leak story.

The problem, of course, is that Hoekstra is probably the single worst person in the country to talk about leaks that compromise national security.

He'd probably prefer to forget, but when Hoekstra was in Congress, he was the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee. In one especially memorable incident, he confirmed to the Washington Post, on the record, that Nidal Malik Hasan had exchanged emails with Anwar al-Awlaki. As Rachel reported at the time, it was a problematic revelation -- that federal officials had kept secret for a reason.

Marc Ambinder followed up today with senior intelligence officials who said "there are concerns" about Hoekstra's loose lips. The Republican lawmaker, who was routinely briefed on some of the nation's most sensitive national security secrets, apparently tipped a radical cleric to surveillance efforts and inadvertently confirmed "a sensitive capability that the N.S.A. regularly employs to collect intelligence."

A former intelligence official privy to details of the NSA's programs said that it "would appear to be the case" that Hoekstra divulged too much information.

Wait, it gets worse.

In August 2007, Hoekstra wrote an op-ed condemning leaks, but the op-ed itself included a leak with classified information about U.S. intelligence budgets.

In November 2006, Hoekstra pushed the Bush administration to publish online a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The idea was to let far-right bloggers "prove" that Saddam had WMD, but Hoekstra's plan led to the accidental release of secret nuclear research.

And in 2009, it was Hoekstra who was supposed to keep secret his itinerary in Iraq, but who instead broadcasted his whereabouts on Twitter.

Hoekstra, in other words, leaked like a sieve. This isn't a subject he should be eager to talk about.

After the world got a look at him advocating for a national birther agency, former Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra told the conservative Mackinac Policy Conference that the whole birther discussion is just so ridiculous. There must be a term for this kind of response -- something like passive-aggressive, but I don't think that's quite it.

The Michigan papers describe the latest from Hoekstra this way:

The West Michigan Republican grew animated and loud as he defended remarks he made earlier this month at a Michigan tea party gathering, suggesting he would not have broached the topic if he had not been asked.

"This is an absolutely ludicrous discussion to be having four years after a presidential (election)," Hoekstra said at a near shout. "It is an absolute waste of time and energy. We have trillion dollar deficits. We have eight percent unemployment. We have a health care system that is collapsing. And somebody is asking about the birthing issue?"

It would be one thing if someone had asked about the "birthing issue" and Hoekstra had said only this:

Sure. I mean, I think -- you know, I think, throw something at me if you want, I think with this president, the book is closed, all right? It's kind of like, I hate to say it, but I think the debate's over -- we lost that debate, and we lost that debate in 2008, when our presidential nominee said, 'I ain't talking about it.' OK, I'm sorry.

But that was just the first part of his response. Hoekstra didn't stop at lamenting John McCain's decision not to join the birther cause; he suggested perpetuating the birther cause as part of the taxpayer-funded bureaucracy. He continued:

"But I do now believe that I'd like to establish a three-person office in Washington, D.C., OK -- knowing it, we'll go to five. But there's no reason why we should have this kind of question, you know, for the president of the United States. So that at any future election, all right, that someone would have to walk into that office, and prove that they meet the minimum qualifications to be president of the United States."

For the record, Hoekstra now says the office for the issue he considers so ludicrous could be staffed by one or two people -- that might count as austerity.

Though it's tempting to think the "Birther" garbage would be fading away, it actually seems to be getting more common in Republican circles. Just over the last couple of months, we've seen incidents involving a leading Romney campaign surrogate, the Arizona Secretary of State, and Reps. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), and Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.).

Two weeks ago, Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) deleted a Birther message from a social media site, and this week, we learned about comments from former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R), who's running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. Though he hasn't endorsed the ridiculous conspiracy theory, per se, the Republican doesn't mind pandering on the subject.

Hoekstra made these comments a few weeks ago, but these excerpts weren't posted by Michigan Democrats until this week. In the clip, Hoekstra is asked at a Tea Party rally for his thoughts on President Obama's birth certificate.

"Sure. I mean, I think -- you know, I think, throw something at me if you want, I think with this president, the book is closed, all right?" Hoekstra tells the man. "It's kind of like, I hate to say it, but I think the debate's over -- we lost that debate, and we lost that debate in 2008, when our presidential nominee said, 'I ain't talking about it.' OK, I'm sorry.

"But I do now believe that I'd like to establish a three-person office in Washington, D.C., OK -- knowing it, we'll go to five. But there's no reason why we should have this kind of question, you know, for the president of the United States. So that at any future election, all right, that someone would have to walk into that office, and prove that they meet the minimum qualifications to be president of the United States."

In Hoekstra's mind, this new federal office would include CIA and FBI officials, who would presumably be tasked with scrutinizing presidential candidates' birth certificates.

Americans have held presidential elections for 223 years, but now, for no real reason at all, Pete Hoekstra wants a new federal trio responsible for investigating candidates' citizenship status.

Hoekstra also quipped that he might now be eligible to run even though he is a Dutch immigrant -- alluding to supposedly lax enforcement that allowed Obama to become president.

"OK, I am a Dutch immigrant. I do not -- maybe now I do -- up until three or four years ago, I didn't believe I met the qualifications to be president of the United States. Am I right?"

Nope, actually you're not.

Is pandering to Birthers as offensive as being a Birther? No, but it's in the ballpark.

About a year ago, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer appeared at the Netroots Nation conference, and mentioned the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as one of the White House's accomplishments.

Daily Kos Associate Editor Kaili Joy Gray, moderating the session, told Pfeiffer, "You mentioned Lilly Ledbetter. Frankly we're a little tired of hearing about that one."

The problem, of course, is that repetition is important, even with talking points most of us have heard many times, because while some get tired of hearing about accomplishments, some quickly forget all about them. For example, Politico's Roger Simon tweeted this message today:

The measure some get "a little tired of hearing about" isn't even recognized by Politico's chief political columnist.

And while some in media don't even know what the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is, some Republicans remain actively hostile towards it.

Former Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra, who is now running to unseat Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), weighed in on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act on Thursday, saying the law was a "nuisance" that shouldn't be in place. [...]

"Will, you know, will repealing it be a priority? If you came back and said, you know, that's really the thing that's hurting my business the most. My guess is there are other things that we can do that have a higher priority in terms of what I, what I believe might need to be done. I think you know we need to create -- that thing is a nuisance. It shouldn't be the law," replied Hoekstra.

The Fair Pay Act may seem obvious and noncontroversial, but let's not forget that when the bill came to the House floor in 2009, 172 out of 175 House Republicans rejected it. And one of them, Hoekstra, wants to go to the Senate next year to help repeal this "nuisance."

Incidentally, Mitt Romney, who doesn't want to say whether he supports the Ledbetter law or not, is quite friendly with Pete Hoekstra. I wonder if he agrees with the idea that the Fair Pay Act is a "nuisance"?

Pete Hoekstra tells the Detroit Free-Press today that his icky, Demon Sheep-lite Super Bowl ad in the rice paddies "has been very, very effective." Hey, the local paper sent a reporter today to talk to him! On video! This afternoon, predictably, he was raising money off his ad being called an example of racism.

"And don't even get me started on the dump truck full of cash that radical left-wing groups like MoveOn, Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and corrupt Union Bosses plan to drop on my head," he writes.

We'll have more on the show tonight -- not about the ad so much as about Pete Hoekstra.

Former Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra, a Republican, would like to replace Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow. His new strategy gets this from our pal Eclectablog:

"Twitter Pete" Hoekstra, the man who wasn't even smart enough to buy his own domain during his run for Governor of Michigan, ran an ad during this year's Superbowl that was so blatantly racist and offensive to Asians that even GOP consultants are flinching.

Featuring a young Asian woman who thanks Stabenow for borrowing so much money from Asia and sending jobs overseas, Hoekstra's ad jams an incredible number of stereotypes into just 30 seconds -- from the bicycle to the rice paddies to the accent.

The ad is classic viral bait, in which the repellant doubles as the attraction. Hoekstra's ad sends viewers to the DebbieSpendItNow.com, screengrabbed above. The site credits the Prosper Group, whose client list includes Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, the Wisconsin GOP and Scott Brown. You want the vanilla site? OK. You want the crazy? Just send the check. Hoekstra's spot is gross, certainly, but it's also sadly usual.

(Image: Pete Hoekstra is running for Senate.)