The op-ed page in today’s Globe is a must-read. It’s really quite funny to see the last three Governors of Massachusetts, all members of the tiny but merry band of MA Republicans, slugging it out over who should be the next president.
Bill Weld is for Romney, as was noted here some time ago in a post I rather enjoyed writing. His piece today is, predictably, the laziest of the three. It simply recites well-worn and largely discredited Romney talking points — such as the non-existent $3 billion budget gap he supposedly inherited, and his alleged non-raising of taxes which of course omits the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of “fees” that he saw fit to hike. Other hilarity in Weld’s piece includes the following:
- The first line: “My fondest memory of my two terms as governor of Massachusetts in the 1990s ….” Uh, Bill? How many terms was that, again? Anyway, I leave it to you, dear reader, to recall your own “fondest memory” of Weld’s truncated governorship. Here’s one possibility.
- “I believe that Romney was a very effective leader for our state.” Whose state was that, Mr. New York Equity Firm Partner? Mr. Bailed Out Of MA As Soon As He Possibly Could?
Paul Cellucci’s op-ed favors Giuliani, and he directly takes on some of the Romney talking points (though he doesn’t mention Weld in doing so). For example:
In four years under Romney, the tax burden in Massachusetts increased by 10 percent with no broad-based tax relief and no income tax cut. Romney promised to cut the income tax from 5.3 percent to 5 percent by the end of his term. It should have been a layup, as it was mandated by the voters in a 2000 ballot initiative, but it never happened.
And there were tax increases in Massachusetts as well, as Romney raised business taxes and vastly increased fees, amounting to billions of dollars out of the bank accounts of taxpayers and their employers throughout his term.
There is a reason the head of the free-market Club for Growth said that Rudy’s economic accomplishments were “remarkable.” There’s also a reason the fiscally conservative CATO Institute gave Romney just a “C” in its rankings of governors’ fiscal policies.
Oof. The rest of Cellucci’s piece talks about how Rudy cleaned up NYC. This is such an interesting argument, in light of how incredibly unpopular Giuliani was on 9/10/01, a few months from the end of his mayoralty. Astonishingly, 9/11 is not mentioned, perhaps for the first time ever in a pro-Giuliani piece.
Finally, Jane Swift backs John McCain: “McCain is no ordinary hero, and these are no ordinary times.” Her basic argument is (1) he’s “the only Republican who can win,” and (2) he’s less craven than Romney and Giuliani. The latter is a fair point.
We seek leadership. We crave integrity. Today’s voter is in search of a president who can elevate politics above self interest and petty partisanship.
McCain’s approach to the troop surge in Iraq is a perfect example. Critics assailed the plan as Quixotic at best and ill conceived at worst, but McCain believed it would work. His standing in the polls plummeted. He refused to change his position. “I’d rather lose an election than a war,” he said – spoken like someone who has been on the battlefield. That’s leadership. That’s presidential.
I find Swift’s the most convincing of the three pieces, though perhaps that’s because I liked aspects of McCain 1.0 enough to cross over in 2000 to vote for him in the GOP primary (I didn’t much care whether Al Gore or Bill Bradley won for the Dems). McCain 2.0 is less appealing to me, though he does occasionally show flashes of ye olde Straight Talk Express. But Swift is also the only one who talks about big picture stuff. Really, who cares if Rudy got rid of NYC’s squeegee men? Is that a big problem in Iraq? And since Weld’s piece doesn’t say much that hasn’t already been discredited, it doesn’t do much for Romney. Swift wins by default.
I find it kinda funny that the quality of the columns is inversely related to the overall record of the Governor. Weld was a fairly good Governor his first term and then was derelict of his duty during his incomplete second term. Cellucci was unremarkable but not a disaster. Swift and Romney were atrocious so go figure.
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p>I have to agree with Swift, McCain now free of frontrunner status and a need to pander to the right is now finally running as a Goldwater conservative and while I would not vote for him in a general election I definitely would approve of him over the scumbag Guliani who will likely attack Iran or Romney who is simply not a leader.
I would have thought it was the day he jumped into the Charles River to prove how clean it was, only to get an ear infection.
…it’s unclear whether or not Weld would have been elected but for the fact that his opponent, John Silber, self-destructed during the interview with Natalie Jacobson.
Just look at 1988, 2000, and 2004. Why do Democrats nominate lousy candidates?
…riddle me this. Why are they always ex-Republican governors of MA who are asked to opine? They are ex- because at least a sufficient number of people probably didn’t want them in office.
I think they get bored once tey realize that the governor of Massachusetts has almost zero power, and nothing at all happens without the blessing of whomever the then resident tough guy in the legislature. Doesn’t matter if they show up for work or not; they might as well spend 360 days a year travelling. DP is an idealist, so he may not have hit this point yet.
You need to elect a governor more than once every 20 years to have ex-governors in any number.
…but, as long as the Speaker of the House and the Prez of the Senate have a good working relationship, they will be running state government. And that is true regardless of who the governor is or whatever his party is. That, of course, was Tommy Finneran’s downfall: Travaglini couldn’t stand him.
Channel five and Jacobson realized rather quickly that interview was their meal ticket for the next little while. Channel 5 ran a Pravda-style coverage of the campaign, shoving the interview into all its coverage and regularly harassing Silber and his campaign. I do remember that WCVB called the race almost as the polls closed, 45 minutes before anyone else. Jacobson’s desperate need for rating was a big part of that contest, and I still hold their coverage of that contest as the low-water mark in biased Massachusetts media. I still refuse to watch news on WCVB for that very reason.
I saw the Jacobson interview with Silber when it was first broadcast, and I was appalled at the intemperatness of Silber’s remarks. I had long believed him to be an idiot who might have been who was studying to be a moron, but I quickly concluded that he wasn’t even studying.
…I just object to Jacobson making it a personal issue afterward. Yes, that was a bad interview, but Jacobson pounded on it for weeks — it made the coverage of the “Dean Scream” sensible in comparison. WCVB wanted Silber to lose, and by gum they did what they could to make it happen.
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What I don’t say here, I say here.
Even Romney admits, if pressed, that the figure is fake.
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p>I don’t hate. I just don’t like it when Romney makes shit up.
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p>Adoration shouldn’t make you stupid.
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p>Why don’t you like it? Because of his name? What do you say about Mr. Patrick’s assertion in February of the impending budget gap in excess of $1 billion? Don’t you just hate that! It didn’t occur you know, primarily because of continued strong income tax and corporte tax receipts, you know, just as in the case of Mr. Romney’s days.
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p>Righto!
Whenever one of yours is called out, there’s no acknowledgment, no effort to correct, nothing. Just a “hey, look over there! A Democrat did something bad once!” Exactly like the Clinton-haters, who every time some Republican is caught with a wide stance, starts screaming about something Bill Clinton did ten years ago. Sad.
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p>All of which is to say: this post has nothing to do with Deval Patrick. Further, the fact that a budget gap was predicted is one thing, and predictions often don’t work out. But for Romney to continue claiming that he closed a $3 billion gap, when hindsight has shown that the gap never existed, is a tad dishonest, wouldn’t you say? Can you answer that question directly, instead of talking about a Democrat?
….you do realize that this apologia is nothing more than a “we might be bad, but you’re worse than we are” tactic.
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p>The apologia* is stupid, of course, but that’s all that they have.
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p>*apologia in a religious connotation, that it is doubtful that any of the apologists will understand.
Let’s take the way-back machine to 2003 and see what that conservative think tank has to say:
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p>Yet, your Boston Globe article claims “Even before Romney unveiled his budget proposal at the end of February 2003, the state Department of Revenue and outside analysts said the $3 billion figure was rooted in revenue projections that were much too low.”
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p>Yet, the Mass Budget and Policy link (published in March, 2003) says no such thing. Who to believe, the Globe or the Mass Budget and Policy folks?
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p>So, facing a deficit of $3 billion, and tax revenue reduced by $3.7 billion, Mr. Romney undertook policy, cut http://www.massbudget.org/arti… billion in public spending, and that along with increases in capital gain tax revenue balanced the budget.
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p>Yet, you boldly claim “that [$3 billion] figure is a fake”. And you’re wrong.
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p>Exactly how I feel.
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p>I wonder if McCain could do it all over again, if he would have gambled on “Staying Himself” starting in 2000. That is, a 1-2-3 punch of “cut the spending”, “stop the lobbyists”, and “if you’re gonna invade, you gotta do the right amount of troops.”
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p>In hindsight, what seemed safe — keep his 2000 supporters, line up a bunch of Bush supporters by tilting towards Bush — cost him his 2000 supporters, and didn’t win him many new ones.
I really like McCain 1.0, and also voted for him in 2000. Frankly, McCain 1.0 would have a good chance at my vote, depending on the Democrats nominated.
Logan Airport Security Chief Had No Aviation Experience, but Swift and Cellucci are not free and clear either.
According to the nonpartisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, the FY 2004 budget passed by the Legislature and signed into a law by Gov. Romney closed a $ 2.5 billion structural deficit from the previous fiscal year.
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p>On the other hand, Romney and the Legislature relied on various one-time revenue sources such as (e.g., significant hikes in state fees and fines, tobacco settlement monies from the lawsuits brought by the federal government and the states’ attorney generals against the major tobacco producers) and the FY 2004 budget cut several hundred million millions in human service, health care and educational programs. Romney and the Democratic Legislature, in my view, made minimal progress in addressing the structural deficits and unrealistic revenue estimates plaguing Massachusetts for several years under Cellucci and Swift. This was also the period when the budget-busters of Medicaid and state transportation projects associated with the Big Dig were adversely affecting the state’s fiscal health.
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p>The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation has several well-researched reports and summaries about the political period that encompasses the tenures of Weld, Cellucci, and Swift. I urge everyone to read the summary reports to gain a fairer and more comprehensive understanding of the fiscal challenges the three Republican Governors and the respective annual legislatures encountered and how specifically each Governor and Legislature addressed these difficult challenges. Governor Patrick and the current Massachusetts Legislature should read these reports as well because they contain some hard-learned lessons about the fiscal insanity of relying on one-time revenue sources, overly optimistic revenue sources and projected expenses, and accounting gimmicks to address a serious structural deficit that has plagued Massachusetts for approximately a decade.