I’ve written my share of single-source blog posts, so I don’t want to pretend every one must contain a ton of research.  But a Strib Hot Dish Politics post touching on the day’s biggest issue — health care reform — let a Minnesota Congressman’s attack go uncontextualized.

The source was John Kline, and the post focused mostly on his defense of federal subsidies to student-loan middlemen such as banks. I would’ve had a bit more fun tweaking the conservative Kline about the his ardor for private-sector giveaways, but reporter Eric Roper did a good job framing both sides of the issue, including Kline’s legitimate complaint about embedding student lending in the health care bill.

The stumble occurred at the end:

Kline also expressed frustration with the latest legislative tactic being proposed to pass the health care bill, the so-called Slaughter Solution. It would involve the House voting on the fixes to the Senate bill without voting on the bill itself, deeming it to have already passed.

Describing the Slaughter Solution to reporters, Kline stopped mid-sentence and remarked, seemingly to himself, "It's incredible to even think about it."

Well, maybe not so incredible. As political analysts had noted throughout the day, Republicans had used the “Slaughter Solution” — also called "deem-and-pass" — repeatedly when they controlled Congress. The American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein mocked the GOP attacks, pointing to one vote in particular, “a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that … GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration.”

Ornstein told me the bill was House Resolution 653, which passed in 2006 with as bare a majority as health care reform might — 216 to 214.  In other words, every vote was critical. Not every Minnesota Republican voted with the 100 percent GOP majority — Jim Ramstad dissented — but among the “aye” voters: John Kline.

As Ornstein wrote of deem-and-pass objectors, “I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news.”

Fairness compels me to note that Ornstein expressed his own disdain for deem-and-pass. Also, as the national media pressed the hypocrisy point, Republican complaints morphed from the tactic itself to using it on something as huge and long-lasting as health care reform.

Still, given how often hypocrisy is a default political position, the Strib should have held Kline more accountable for his own voting record.