Today’s Washington Post features a lead editorial entitled “Mr. Kilgore’s Empty Rhetoric,” and it’s a humdinger. They shine a light Jerry Kilgore’s free-lunch plan for Virginia, pointing out (quite rightly) that his promises to increase spending on just about everything don’t jibe with his promises to cut taxes. It just ain’t possible. More interestingly, the TV ad attacking Lt. Governor Tim Kaine that Kilgore authorized is funded by the Republican Governors Association, an organization of men who have discovered, once they become governor, that taxes have to be raised. The Post writes:
The irony is that the ad was paid for by the Republican Governors Association, whose own chairman, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, actually has raised taxes; in fact, he pushed through the largest tax increase in Nevada’s history. “Some people say that makes me a bad Republican,” Mr. Guinn told The Post’s T.R. Reid. “Well, I would be a worse Republican, . . . and a worse citizen, if I didn’t find enough money to educate our children and fund our Medicaid program and provide decent prenatal care.”
Mr. Guinn has plenty of company among Republican governors whose anti-tax ideology and campaign rhetoric have collided with the realities of governance and tight state budgets. In the past two years, The Post’s Mr. Reid reported, Republican chief executives in Idaho, Georgia, Ohio and Indiana have all sought higher taxes — in several cases sharply higher. In some cases the departure from GOP tax-cutting orthodoxy has been nearly instantaneous.
As the Post points point, Kilgore “enjoys the luxury of inexperience” — he’s never budgeted nothin’ for nobody. I’d be surprised if he’d even gone through the budget game that the Sorensen Institute ran at our meeting a few weeks ago. (If he had done such an exercise, he wouldn’t be making his free lunch proposals.)
I don’t care if the candidate is a Democrat or a Republican — anybody who has run for an office in Virginia proposing a reduction in taxes and an increase in expenses has earned my condemnation, and will continue to do so. I like that Tim Kaine has refused to rule out new taxes for the same reason that I liked that Republican Senator Emmett Hanger did the same when running for reelection in 2003 : a) we’re underfunding our obligations right now and b) circumstances change, and they can change quickly.
Kilgore should take a day to review the budget and understand the demands on the budgeting process. I anticipate that he’d find he and Gov. Guinn have more in common than the Republican Governors Association.
give Kilgore some credit. He knows what he’s doing. He’s lying to get elected.
The Weakness Juggernaut Continues.
This guy Kilgore couldn’t be a weaker candidate. We’ve known all along that the guy has no public
presence. He’s so insecure about his public speaking ability that he’s got to turn it into
accusations of reverse discrimination whenever anyone mentions his weak sounding voice.
His credentials are weak. He’s too much of a chicken to debate Kain in public. His ability to
understand the issues facing the state of Virginia: completely weak.
And now it’s clear he has no idea how to manage the budget in Virginia. Virginia’s AAA
bond rating is extremely rare and very strong. What do you think will happen to that strength
in the hands of someone so very very weak?
Weak, Weak, Weak, Weak, Weak!
Virginia’s reputation nationwide and worldwide is one of great strength. Kilgore cannot
possibly represent that strength. He’s too weak.