Worst Defense of Mourdock Award

There have been some pretty specious attempts at defending Mourdock’s quixotic attempts to slow or halt the Chrysler bankruptcy, but I think this one takes the cake.

Shorter Abdul: Losing $6 million dollars on a bad investment is the same as losing a fundamental right in a democracy.

I wish I was kidding, since I generally like Abdul. Sadly, I’m not:

Finally, the same people who complain about how much Mourdock spent challenging the bankruptcy are also the same people who supported the legal challenges to Indiana’s Voter ID law a few years ago. That law was upheld as Constitutional.

There are really only two ways two interpret Abdul’s assertion here: (1) Once you’ve supported one lawsuit of any kind, it’s hypocritical to criticize any other lawsuit; or (2) that there’s an equivalency between a bad investment and fundamental rights. The first is so patently absurd, I can’t even bring myself to argue against it.

The second interpretation of Abdul’s argument, though, bears a closer look.

Abdul is assuming that a legal challenge is only worth money if it is ultimately successful. This is problematic, since “[m]ost expert observers didn’t expect Mourdock to succeed…” (Journal-Gazette) If the measure of a lawsuit’s worth is whether it is ultimately successful, then this was pretty much doomed from the start. This also doesn’t bode well for Abdul’s comparison, since the plaintiffs in the Voter ID case lost – the state won. By Abdul’s assumption, that means the case was worth it from the state’s point of view.

Look, Indiana bought into Chrysler at a bad time. We made a bad investment. Mourdock and Daniels can couch it in the terminology of fighting for the “rights” of secure creditors and resisting the evil socialist bailout money, but that still doesn’t equate this poor decision with voting rights.