Repugs Closing Ranks

PA politics again (yes - couldn't put it off any more)...

I think we can pretty much say for certain at this point that former Pittsburgh Steeler great Lynn Swann will be the Republican candidate for PA governor in the upcoming election, having won the endorsement of prominent local party bosses and, in the process, freezing out Bill Scranton, the former PA lieutenant governor who was also running for the nomination.

I know it’s always better to have as wide a field of candidates as you can in these primaries, so it’s kind of funny to a point to see each party condemning the other for deciding on an “anointed one” early on at the expense of everyone else in the field. This is because of the simple fact that, as in most things, money (consolidating resources as early as you can to mount as strong of an opposition as possible) will trump any notion of fair play.

So, in the process of accepting the nomination, what does Swann do? Well, for starters (taking a page right from the Repug playbook), he criticizes Rendell for, among other things, failing to provide property tax relief. Swann also criticizes Rendell for “raising every fee you can think of”.

(I know it is completely expected for Swann to totally ignore the fact that Bushco, the corporate Repug office in Washington D.C. to which Swann now reports as a member of the PA subsidiary, has done nothing except generate oceans of red ink while expecting the states to balance their own budgets, and that minor fact may have something to do with Rendell’s alleged across-the-board fee raising as governor of a “blue” state. However, the fact that Swann did that anyway is still amusing.)

Well, maybe Number 88 should give this a read (from the Bucks County Courier Times yesterday):

The state House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected a property-tax cutting bill similar to a version it rejected two months ago, even though Gov. Ed Rendell had urged members to send the bill to his desk. The House’s 197-0 vote to “non-concur” with legislation passed by the Senate set the stage for the creation of a House-Senate conference committee to resolve a lingering stalemate over how, and how much, to reduce a tax that helps finance the cost of public schools. Both Republican and Democratic House leaders expressed hope that the conference committee’s negotiations would produce a final bill that lawmakers can consider next month.

Sounds to me like those jugheads in our state legislature should pull a stick out of somewhere and actually start ACTING ON WHAT RENDELL PROPOSED YEARS AGO!

This, though, points out that Swann’s popularity has leveled off for now against Rendell, and the incumbent governor still leads in the polls, so it may be that the factor of Swann’s name recognition may be wearing off. However, I’m sure this will turn out to be a close race, assuming that Swann emerges as his own man and something more than an East Coast version of “govanah Ahh-nold.”

Oh, and by the way, according to this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer (and also noted at the Keystone Politics site above), Swann failed to vote in 20 of 36 elections for the senate, the president, and the governor. I would say that this lapse in his civic duty will do absolutely nothing to help him at the polls in November.