Cuccinelli Really Steps In It

Up until a few weeks ago if asked I would have said that Ken Cuccinelli had run the strongest campaign among the endangered Republican incumbents this year. With the exception of one serious misstep Ken had controlled the terms of the debate in his re-elect. By separating Janet from her affiliation with the successful Fairfax County Public School system he had been making the best effort at caricaturing her into an impossible choice. But now he has not only reminded voters of her role with the schools but has insisted on a terrible and stupid strategy of attacking the schools themselves. And he’s fallen right into Janet’s outstanding narrative.

37th Senate District – Leans Turnover

Cuccinelli Is Scared, And He Should Be

In the latest “Cuccinelli Compass” Ken Cuccinelli tries his best to worm out of the abuser fees mess he helped pass.

Follow me through the Cuccinelli contortions:

1) He starts with The Blame Game

• Blame the Governor- “The Governor has long supported raising money through these abuser fees.”
• Blame the House of Delegates- “the House always wanted much higher fines/fees than the Senate”

2) He moves on to a little Misdirection

• He voted against some other version of the abuser fees (that was never enacted)- “I was one of 6 Senators that voted against the bill.”
• And then rinse and repeat- “I do not support the abuser fee concept”

Republican Division

JMU Duke has been on top of the hypocrisy of Republicans when it comes to questions of moral values. The tendency of Republican politicians to condemn without a bit of notice to the beam in their own eye is pretty outrageous. But this trend extends beyond those issues to taxes as well. Earlier I reported on the Big Lie that Cuccinelli, O’Brien and countless other Republican officials have told when signing these “anti-tax pledges”. And today the narrative continues. The Republican-controlled Board for Prince William County (home of great wingnuts like BVBL) had an opportunity to derail the recent transportation tax increases last night, but instead voted almost unanimously to approve the new taxes.

The title “Republican Division” refers to the gap between Republican rhetoric and reality. The gap between words and deeds. The gap between Republican politicians and Republican voters.

It seems that even Republicans don’t really believe in the crazy ideology they espouse in order to get their base riled up for election time. When will their “base” get a clue?

The Failure of the GOP Assembly

The Gilmore-Cuccinelli-O’Brien philosophy of starving government of critical resources to address health care needs and public safety needs found its horrific counter-argument in the events at Virginia Tech. Today’s Post notes the continuing multi-faceted review process that is occurring throughout state government in the wake of those events. Yesterday’s House committee hearings on revamping and improving our broken mental health systems are just the latest development in reform which is tragically overdue.

A Liar’s Promise

Yesterday JMU Duke had a post up on NLS talking about the state budget problems and in particular musing about the fiscal irresponsibility of the Republican transportation bill. I fully agree with the Duke’s main point but I disagree with the contention that there were no new tax hikes in that legislation. In fact I think it would require either a flood of generosity or a disingenuous literalism to contend that the legislation did not raise taxes. The bill, even in it’s form prior to Amendment by the Governor, authorized local authorities to levy new taxes of hundreds of millions of dollars. In truth, the legislation authorized or directly enacted a diverse array of new taxes.

But guess which principled leaders voted for them?