I like this. Not sure it’s going to do a lot of good or get a lot of play, but it’s good discussion fodder for a Friday afternoon:
Maryland Republican Party Chair Audrey Scott released the following statement in response to Governor Martin O’Malley’s virtual town hall taking place (yesterday) evening:
“It is fitting that Governor O’Malley would attempt to engage Marylanders in a virtual town hall since his administration seems to have been operating in a virtual reality. Here in the real world, Maryland families are looking at the economic leadership coming from Annapolis and the picture has been bleak. Since O’Malley has come into office over 200,000 jobs have been lost. When is Governor O’Malley going to stop living in the virtual world and start offering real solutions for real Maryland families?”
You forgot to mention his band, Audrey. Larry Hogan likes to do that and it makes for a fun counterpoint. By the way, the original release cites the 200,000 job loss number as it comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I’m starting to wonder if there’s an intent to start offering real solutions from the O’Malley bunch. Instead, the trend over the last three years has been to:
- Overbudget and need to make cuts later, generally in areas which directly affect Maryland families.
- Depend more and more upon federal money to fill holes in the state budget.
- Continue to tax and regulate people away from investment in Maryland business.
In short, the state’s government continues to expand well beyond the functions it’s supposed to do and into the wallets and private lives of Maryland residents. Obviously 2010 promises to be more of the same because there’s an election next year and, if anything, recent history had shown that fiscal responsibility will be stretched to the breaking point in the final budget of a governor’s term in order to distribute goodies to prospective voters.
The GOP will have to be watching like a hawk, but more importantly it needs to be a united front against fiscal mismanagement. Sadly, several members of the GOP delegation tend too much to “go along to get along” with General Assembly Democrats to get a few crumbs of the overall pie. If the GOP has put up a responsible budget alternative and the final budget votes don’t reflect at least a party-line 33-14 and 104-37 vote in the Senate and House of Delegates, respectively, it will send a message of weak-willedness to Maryland voters and hurt the GOP’s chances next year.
