The Gilmore people are still fighting yesterday’s war

To recap, Spank That Donkey and yourrs truly are having a back and forth on who has the better shot at defeating Mark Warner in this year’s United State Senate election.  Spanky is making the case for Jim Gilmore, while I am, of course, arguing for my candidate Delegate Bob Marshall.

In Spanky’s latest installment, he insist Gilmore can win because he can present himself as the agent of change.  Try to stop laughing; he’s serious:

When a governor gets elected and goes to Richmond to implement their campaign promises, they always run into one big problem. The System that the Founding Fathers set up to slow changes in the governmental process. You know the old Executive checked by the Legislative branch of Government. The 140 elected representatives of the House of Delegates and Senate, that make up our General Assembly.

This system has stymied many a Governor before, until Gov. Jim Gilmore formulated a plan to deliver on a campaign pledge to eliminate the Car Tax; by merely transferring excess state income tax revenues back to the localities, and lift that burden from the people. He even took it a step further by reducing in-state college tuition 20%, and freezing it at that level for four years. That is change citizens can feel in their wallets, and see on reduced student loan statements.

However, this approach to government finance doesn’t sit well with the bureaucrats and politicians who screamed at the top of their lungs: “It’s not fair! “You have ruined our Santa Claus routine for pandering to the interests, and their bevy of lobbyists who come to see us every year”, they cried.

Um, forgive me, but how is exactly did Gilmore put an end to “pandering to the interests”?  By giving state-funded universities a taxpayer funded, free-market distorting competitive advantage (i.e., the ”tuition freeze”)?  I don’t think so.

Perhaps if Gilmore had forced other “interests” to be more efficient with taxpayer dollars, then Spanky might have a point, but even he has to admit (cleverly disguised as a boast) that -

Gov. Gilmore’s administration oversaw the largest increase in K-12 education spending to that date, along with the largest increase in transportation spending in history.

Hey, Spanky, perhaps you missed the memo, but we’re Republicans - the party of limited government and lower spending, not “largest increase . . . to date.”  With his own words, Spanky destroys his entire argument.  Gilmore didn’t put the “interests” on notice; he pandered to them.  In fact, had he pandered less, he could have achieved a complete elimination of the car-tax in four years, rather than the reduction that is slowely being eroded.

Now, Mark Warner has weaknesses; Spanky and I agree on that.  The problem is, Governor Gilmore is far less able to exploit them than someone who has spent 16 years in the House of Delegates fighting spending increases, tax hikes, and unconstitutional regional government - i.e., Bob Marshall.

Gilmore had the chance to be an agent of change when he was Governor, but he failed (and on education and transportation, he really didn’t even try).  Marshall has been fighting the “interests” with whom Gilmore made peace for a decade and a half.

A Warner-Gilmore race will simply be a race between two spendthrift, “pro-choice” former Governors who have been all over the place on Iraq.  Bob Marshall is the only true candidate of change.