Abuse
and Scorn Round-Up
With
Virginia
punditry nearly suspended by holidays and anticipation
of the Tuesday, April 13th, vote on higher
taxes by the House of Delegates, a review of the
“polite discourse” surrounding the House’s
performance is in order.
Stalwart
GOP critic Gordon
Morse paternalistically addressed his Republican
“friends” in a Washington
Post piece. The anti-tax crowd lobbying them plays
“fast and loose the facts,” but the vote on higher
taxes represents “coming to grips with reality.” Noting that the absence of four anti-tax
Republicans allowed the finance committee to approve the
tax measure headed for the full House, he sarcastically
wondered, “How much else could have been accomplished
if a load of House Republicans had stayed home for the
entire session.” Morse singles out Del. Steve Landes,
R-Weyers
Cave, for opposing tax increases yet supporting pork for his
district.
Another
dependable mainstream critic, Bob
Gibson of the Daily
Progress, blames the re-districting under former
Republican House Speaker Vance Wilkins for the House’s
performance. Calling
the gerrymandering a “gift” from Wilkins, Gibson
sees it as having an “unintended” result:
The
list of unintended consequences from Wilkins’ gift
flows from the power to avoid compromise and hold onto
power. Shutting down state government by holding out
past June for a no-tax-increase position and sticking
extra burdens on local governments are options on the
list.
House
moderates probably will save the Republican Party and
its majority from going over the cliff in an act of
hard-nosed hubris, but Wilkins’ redistricting gift
created so many House districts that are so heavily
Republican that many in the caucus feel the seeming
ability to stare down Senate Republicans forever.
Of
course, Senate Republicans would never stare down the
House on behalf of new taxes.
A
new face in the “Virginia Professor-Pundit” niche
already ably occupied by UVA’s Larry Sabato and
VCU’s Robert Holsworth, among others, emerged to beat
up on Republicans. Quentin
Kidd, a government professor at Christopher
Newport
University, wrote in the Washington
Post of the GOP’s failures:
This
budget conflict is a real problem with severe
implications for the commonwealth, but at its core, it's
a symptom of another, more fundamental, battle:
Virginia
Republicans' struggle for maturity as a governing party. Governing, as
it happens, involves such skills as compromise,
pragmatism and a willingness to make tough decisions
when necessary. But at the moment, Virginia
Republicans look like nothing so much as teenagers, fighting for
respect but struggling with responsibility. The carefree
habits of adolescence are hard to kick, and the burdens
of adulthood pop up everywhere. But unless the
Republicans grow up soon, the voters may decide they
aren't responsible enough to govern.
Oh,
and Kidd has just written a book on Virginia
politics, one plugged very nicely by the Post.
For
those who’d rather have all their Republican-bashing
in one convenient spot, there’s the Robert
Griendling weblog
Commonwealth
Common-
sense. Common
sense appears to emanate only from the left nationally
and from the pro-tax side in Virginia, to judge from Griendling’s links and approving
commentary whenever anti-tax forces are criticized. After quoting anti-tax Del. Terry Kilgore,
R-Gate
City, Griendling identifies him as “The evil twin,”
apparently to differentiate him from his brother,
Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, “The Other
Evil Twin.”
Is
anyone defending the anti-tax House Republicans?
Weblogger
Ben Domenech
has waged a lonely battle supporting them, but even he
admitted that the outlook
for anti-tax forces was “grim.” Domenech railed
against House Republicans supporting new taxes as
“toad swallowers,” a name conferred on them by
former Reagan budget director James Miller. Domenech
embraces the ultimate hardcore Republican position:
“Those Republicans who stood for higher taxes and
higher spending deserve to be run out of town on a rail,
even if it means losing the GOP majorities in Richmond.”
A.
Barton Hinkle
of the Richmond
Times-Dispatch remained an oasis of balance in a
desert of partisanship. He noted contradictions: A Times-Dispatch
poll on the budget standoff showed, “Those who favor
only spending cuts outnumber those who favor only tax
hikes by more than two to one,” while those who
appeared at town hall meetings overwhelmingly favored
higher taxes. Hinkle wondered aloud if both sides were
truly committed to principle over politics, quoting
Ernest Hemingway’s famous line, “Isn’t it pretty
to think so?”
Pundit
Versus Broker
Gov.
Mark Warner
took to the op-ed pages of the Daily
Press to argue for his budget plan, somewhat
oblivious to the fact that his plan is barely recognized
as a potential compromise between the vast differences
between the Senate plan and that of the House. He
criticized the House plan as inadequate, but offered no
criticism of the Senate plan to raise taxes much higher
than his proposal. The Governor appeared to be more of a
pundit and less of a broker.
Pundit
Blowback
In
an unusual Washington
Post op-ed page development, Del.
James Dillard, R-Fairfax, took on a critical column
by Melanie Scarborough, highlighted in the last edition
of Virginia
Pundit Watch. Dillard didn’t refute her charges so
much as claim that her focus on Gov. Warner’s past
promises “diverted attention from the realities of
2004.” He urged support for what would become the
House budget bill that will be considered on Tuesday.
Baseball
Treachery?
Marc
Fisher of the Washington
Post led a chorus of Northern Virginians outraged
that major league baseball was considering the Norfolk
area — Norfolk!
— instead of NVA for a team. “What’s next, Front
Royal?” asked an incredulous Fisher. Hmm, the good
folks of Front Royal and Warren
County
might just consider themselves part of the
ever-expanding “Northern Virginia” area.
Mystery
Women
As
Warner Administration economic developers struggle with
finding meaningful ways of stimulating business
formation by women, along comes a study indicating that
64 percent of women involved in venture capital in 1995
had left the field by 2000, as opposed to 33 percent of
men. Where did they go? Shannon
Henry of the Washington
Post reviewed the report and the questions it left
unanswered. One interesting note was that women in
venture capital did not give other women preferential
treatment when funding high-risk investments.
General
Assembly (W)rap
Kerry
Dougherty
satirized the whole General Assembly in the Virginian-Pilot. She pointed out the important work they
accomplished in lieu of a budget, such as scrapping the
“controversial” Sweet Potato Board and fixing
“that pesky problem of nudist camps for teenagers.”
She suggested that legislators designate every February
as “Budget Month in Virginia,” but concluded:
Whom
are we kidding?
Our
politicians will never pass a “February Is Budget
Month” bill. There’s no time. They’re too busy not
passing a budget.
--
April 12, 2004
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