Virginia Foxx ... "Party Crasher"

Madame Virginia Foxx has a well known history of showing up at grand openings and ribbon-cuttings and other such photo-ops ... to claim credit for whatever is being instituted. But generally she gets away with it. When she showed up for the Dell factory opening, she got called on her hypocrisy in the Winston-Salem Journal last Thursday:

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Perhaps the most curious presence was U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-5th. She sat right up on the stage with Dell, Easley and assorted other bigwigs.

As a state senator, Foxx opposed corporate raids on the public treasury. She voted against tax breaks for FedEx in 2002 and for R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in 2003.

But she was nowhere to be found when the General Assembly met in special session Nov. 4, 2004, to vote on the Dell incentives.

A few days before that session, she cited a prior family commitment as the reason for her planned absence. That's interesting, especially when you consider the fact that she had a congressional election Nov. 2.

When asked before that election where she stood on the Dell package, Foxx ducked the question. "If I saw the legislation, I would answer that," she said in a story published on Election Day 2004.

Yet there she was yesterday, smiling along with the rest of the luminaries.

When she was asked after the multi-media show if she had changed her views on incentives, she started by talking about the quality work force in the Triad and what a good thing Dell is.

Asked another way if she had changed her view, Foxx replied that she "didn't have anything to do with it .... I missed that day. I had previous plans I couldn't change."

But would she have voted in favor? Or at least "paired" her vote with another senator so we would know where she stood?

"I don't deal in hypotheticals," she said.

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Madame Foxx deals. She's just dishonest about it.