As I’ve often noted in a variety of columns here at Colorado Politics, one of the things in our current political system that really drives me nuts is rank hypocrisy. And, as I’ve further noted, one of the reasons I count myself as a Democrat is because you must embrace far too much hypocrisy to be a loyal Republican these days.

We saw yet another remarkable, yet sadly not shocking, example of such hypocrisy recently when uber far-right Sen. Ted Cruz took to Twitter to announce new federal funding for a highway project in Texas. He even ended with “a great bipartisan victory!” The only problem is that Cruz actually voted against the bill to provide said funding. The Biden White House (finally starting to play hardball at least some of the time) retweeted the Cruz post with the devastating notation “Senator Cruz voted against this.”

Here we see yet another example of a politician really wanting it both ways. He wants his far-right buddies to applaud his voting against government spending on silly things like infrastructure, and he wants everyone else to think that he supported a plan to make life better for folks in Texas. Curse that darn internet that remembers everything, eh, Ted?

I mention this hypocrisy to help frame yet another example of such GOP fuzziness with the truth as seen in a recent report. That story noted that GOP senate candidate Joe O’Dea seems to by “pulling a Cruz,” although perhaps not quite so blatantly, as O’Dea appears to be both smarter and less insufferable as Cruz.

Most folks who are following our senate campaign have noted that O’Dea is a self-made man who has achieved a great deal of success in the private sector, as did Michael Bennet prior to entering public service. And as a capitalist, I applaud O’Dea’s ability to create a company, Concrete Express, Inc., from nothing and to make it a major player in the construction industry in Colorado. And heck, he keeps telling us that he is a moderate who will vote against Mitch McConnell and the MAGA folks.

Those claims fair less well when it is noted that O’Dea has bent the knee in appearances with McConnell and has reached out to the far-right folks for support, while also trying to “pull a Cruz” by indicating his alleged “moderate” positions, but that’s all old news.

But the story above noted that while O’Dea embraces the standard GOP yelping about making government smaller, he himself has massively profited from lots and lots of government contracts and spending. Recently, for example, O’Dea showed up at the groundbreaking ceremony for an environmental mitigation project on the Western Slope. It makes sense that Bennet, as one of our senators, would be there. But oddly, it also makes sense for O’Dea to be there. Not because he is an elected official, but because his company is the project’s general contractor. That’s $14 million of our tax dollars going to the company of a guy who, at least to some, argues there should be less government spending.

Now, if that one project was the entirety of his governmental largess, that wouldn’t mean too much. Big companies often have governmental contracts. But as is reported in the story, O’Dea has been very, very busy pursuing tax dollars and government contracts for years. The vast majority of CEI’s business comes from governmental entities, with millions and millions of federal, state and local tax dollars finding their way to O’Dea’s company and to his pocket. All this while on his official website, O’Dea attacks the Dems over, you guessed it, government spending. So, O’Dea hates government spending, unless, it appears, that spending requires the services of a certain company named CEI.

To be clear, I do not object to CEI and O’Dea getting government contracts for public works. By all accounts, CEI does a fine job of delivering a quality product to taxpayers. Heck, O’Dea’s personal story of building a strong company is as American as it gets. But you don’t get to sip at the public trough for decades and then denounce that very same type of funding that put your business over the top in the first place.

O’Dea “pulled a Cruz” in his two-faced pronouncements on government spending. When tilting toward the left, he calls (through a campaign spokesperson) the environmental project noted above as “an ecologically responsible project that will help wildlife and help conserve Colorado water.” But when he tilts right, he denounces big government and big government spending.

My sense is that O’Dea is far more honorable than Cruz, but frankly, that isn’t saying too much. With nearly a half-billion dollars in government contracts in just the last 15 years, O’Dea would seem unlikely to now bite the hand that feeds him and his company. Yet the GOP leadership is apparently convinced that he is now a true believer, at least in terms of voting against anything that a Biden administration would want.

But the evidence suggests, it seems to me, that O’Dea is now fully onboard the GOP hypocrisy train: he hates government spending, unless it is for his own business.

Ted Cruz would be proud.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.