Speaker Bill Howell was not happy with the treatment accorded him by the Washington Post when the special session ended; nor should he be. The special session was the Speaker’s finest hour in many years: he held the party together, walked away from the legacy of tax increases that stained the party in 2004 and 2007, came up with a creative plan, and generally improved the local GOP “brand.” The Post didn’t seem to notice any of that, and Howell got upset.
His response to the Post was a bit disjointed. In fact, Howell, sent a shiver down my spine with this line in paragraph two:
Kaine can’t be surprised about state Republicans’ determination to oppose statewide tax increases.
Call it paranoia; call it excessive parsing of the language; call it whatever you like; but I always worry when Republican use qualifiers in expressing their opposition to tax hikes, particularly the “statewide” qualifier. That one leaves the door open to regional tax hikes – the very thing that killed the party last year.
To be fair to Howell, though, he goes back-and-forth between the dreaded “statewide” qualifier and no qualifier at all. That in itself is an improvement from before the special session.
Howell needs to be careful; he only got halfway there with this op-ed. If he wants me and the rest of the low-tax crew fully in his corner, he has to follow Bill Bolling’s example and oppose all tax increases, without qualifiers.
In other words (as weird as this sounds), he has to say as he did.
July 29, 2008 at 11:27 am |
Your point is spot on. The point needs to be driven home to Howell and the leadership in the House and Senate that regional tax authorities won’t fix transportation and won’t get more Republicans elected. We now have a plan that can improve transportation infrastructure without squeezing the taxpayer. It’s time for the party to get behind this and start selling it so that we can win in 2009.