I wanted to wait for a few days to react to the Governor’s speech. This will be brief. I haven’t changed my mind from previous posts, which you can read if you like. The special election was the Governor’s re-election and he lost. Republican strategists have no answer for nurses, teachers, firefighters, prison guards and cops. Republicans cannot buy votes by outspending Democrats, so the State of the State speech was of little consequence to Arnold’s re-election bid. Bill Whalen succinctly outlined what the Governor didn’t say in his speech.
Let me add a couple of items to this list. While the Governor correctly outlined the massive infrastructure deficit faced the by the State, what he didn’t say is that the Legislature has made choices over the years to spend windfall tax revenues on programs, not infrastructure, and that this is the only reason bonds are necessary to finance these projects. He also didn’t point out the obvious – there is waste, fraud and abuse in State Government, and that he has the business skills to identify these areas and create savings from making changes in various agencies – all of which he can do without substantial legislative involvement. Instead, he offered up a spending proposal intolerable to conservatives without any effort at all to continue to find savings in government’s other programs.
Due to Prop 98 there is little we can do to curb education spending, which has produced nothing close to a result commensurate with the increases over the past few years. The public remains unaware of all of the money we are wasting on education and relatively unconcerned. With a popular preschool initiative looming – the Governor has positioned the State for junk bond status once again if these bonds are issued and an economic downturn creates tax revenues insufficient to make the bond payments.
I am wondering why we just don’t hand the State back to the Democrats and watch them destroy it – AGAIN. The Governor’s re-election seems now as unlikely as before. We have to question whether or not we as Republicans are willing to go through all of the time, money and effort to support polices with which we do not agree.