1. If you don't believe in globalization, you can legitimately lock out foreign competition and insist on an all-American supply chain, keeping jobs and money in the US.
2. It allows you to bring home the pork. Military contractors have a proven willingness to situate assembly plants to deliver jobs in politically convenient locations.
3. It's compatible with Libertarian/Tea Party beliefs, as military spending tends to get a free pass from the balanced budget brigade.
4. People will call you "a hawk" and "strong on defense" and "supporting our troops". Or at least they won't call you the opposite of those things.
5. Spending on things like DARPA funds cool things like the internet and the DARPA Grand Challenge and robots and things. Pretty sciencey and cool.
> 3. It's compatible with Libertarian/Tea Party beliefs, as military spending tends to get a free pass from the balanced budget brigade.
Tea Party, maybe, but not libertarian. Reason, Cato, and the like are highly critical of military spending and very frequently chastise mainstream Republicans for focussing on discretionary and entitlement spending while ignoring the military spending.
1. If you don't believe in globalization, you can legitimately lock out foreign competition and insist on an all-American supply chain, keeping jobs and money in the US.
2. It allows you to bring home the pork. Military contractors have a proven willingness to situate assembly plants to deliver jobs in politically convenient locations.
3. It's compatible with Libertarian/Tea Party beliefs, as military spending tends to get a free pass from the balanced budget brigade.
4. People will call you "a hawk" and "strong on defense" and "supporting our troops". Or at least they won't call you the opposite of those things.
5. Spending on things like DARPA funds cool things like the internet and the DARPA Grand Challenge and robots and things. Pretty sciencey and cool.
6. $60 million in lobbying in 2012 https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=D01&yea... with Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin all in the top 20 individual donors https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYe...
Compare that to funding boring old schools and bridges and things which have none of these benefits.