Are the Republicans so hard up that they have to bring Pataki out of retirement for a run at US Senate?
Governor Pataki’s administration one of the most political and partisan in New York's history which presided over the destruction of upstate New York now wants to be a US Senator.
You have to read this article from: GOLIATH BUSINESS
In 1997,
Pataki abandoned his own version of a "read my lips" pledge: that he would end New York City's ruinous rent control. He simply capitulated when polls showed his popularity plummeting among Manhattanites who had never voted for, and had no intention of ever voting for, a Republican.
That same year, Pataki supported a $2.4 billion education bond act to further finance a corrupt and incompetent School Construction Authority that on one occasion spent $300,000 to build a wheelchair ramp under a basketball hoop. Thank heavens the voters had the good sense to reject the bond act. The following year the Pataki administration reversed its long-standing opposition to the largest takeover of a private corporation by a state government in America's history: the $7 billion Long Island Lighting Company appropriation.
As he tightened his embrace of government activism, Pataki abandoned other bedrock principles:
* His pledge to curb Medicaid costs.
* The fight to end unfunded state mandates on local municipalities.
* Promises to avoid one-shot fiscal gimmicks.
* The campaign to stop "back door borrowing" and enact true debt reform. (As a result of this capitulation the total debt burden on future New Yorkers has grown 40 percent since Cuomo left office.)
* His pledge to impose no new taxes, which ended in 1999 with a $400 million cigarette tax hike, and hit a new low in 2003 with raises of almost every conceivable tax and fee.
* The effort to seek state labor productivity gains.
* Republican opposition to the Clinton administration's "dredge it down to bedrock" policy that is forcing General Electric to eliminate PCBs from the Hudson River. (A decision driven by politics rather than environmental science, which is now costing G.E., a major New York employer, hundreds of millions of dollars and scaring away potential investors in the state economy.)
* And his promise to pass budgets on time and thus save municipalities millions in funding delays.
In short, Governor Pataki completely discarded the principles of fiscal restraint. Since 1998, state budget expenditures have jumped more than 30 percent. Spending has increased at twice the inflation rate, resulting in record-breaking structural deficits.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, instead of warning New Yorkers that fiscal restraint was required because the days of wine and roses were over, Pataki increased spending in his election-year budget by four times the inflation rate. The spending frenzy was funded with $4 billion in "non-recurring revenues" and raids on state rainy-day funds. A June 2002 New Republic cover story titled "How George Pataki Became a Liberal" explained that these increased expenditures were a critical part of Pataki's campaign strategy. Specifically, the governor "cut deals with traditionally Democratic unions, whose leaders will endorse--and whose members will vote for--whichever politician satisfies their demands for higher wages and benefits. Pataki and the state have paid handsomely--hence the escalating state budgets of the last few years."
In an attempt to escape blame for the financial mess his policies created, Pataki moved to the right after his re-election and made a show of preaching the virtues of fiscal conservatism. But his actions when the chips were down didn't measure up to his rhetoric. Pataki's proposed 2003-2004 budget called for expenditures to decline only one tenth of 1 percent, leaving a projected $7 billion revenue shortfall which he planned to fill with $6 billion in one-shot revenues and $1.3 billion in fee and tax increases. His budget was packed with fiscal gimmicks that merely postponed the day of reckoning.
When the state legislature eventually passed an even more profligate budget that actually increased spending and included a state income tax increase, Pataki vetoed the measure. But the governor failed to use the full weight of his office to block this grossly irresponsible budget. To spruce up his national image at a time when he was openly plumping as a national candidate for Vice President or other high office, Pataki gave some showy speeches denouncing the legislature's tax increases. But he twisted no arms (as Nelson Rockefeller often had), and his veto was overwhelmingly overridden--including by every single senator of his own party.
So, sadly, New York Republican leaders have once again abdicated their role as guardians of taxpayer interests. As oppressive taxes rise again, industries and people will once more be forced to relocate. This will in turn cause tax receipts to decline, and build pressure for even higher rates. Here lies the vicious cycle that California is now tasting.There's more. During the past six years, Pataki also managed to renounce his conservative base on social and cultural issues. The administration has embraced "hate-crime" legislation and domestic partner benefits pushed by homosexual groups, and the governor created a special class of citizens when he signed the state's Gay Rights Law. Pataki went along with legislation that repealed a "conscience clause" on state abortion services, thus forcing religious medical institutions to violate their commitment to sanctity of human life. And in 2000 he called for the repeal of the right-to-life plank in the national GOP's platform.
The last Republican Presidential candidate to carry the Empire State was Ronald Reagan. He succeeded in spite of the fact that he proudly ran on a platform that was pro-life and devoted to traditional family life. Reagan did not fear the ridicule of Manhattan's fashionable salons--he had the confidence and character to defend transcendent values. George Pataki and his adjutants in New York's Republican Party, on the other hand, have--in a desperate desire to be all things to all people--squandered the historic opportunity entrusted to them in 1994. By abandoning their fiscal and cultural principles, they betrayed the coalition of upstate and suburban conservatives and inner-city blue-collar ethnics who elected them.
What are the practical results of their appeasement strategy? In 1998, a Democrat replaced a Republican as state attorney general. Democrat Chuck Schumer ended the senatorial career of Al D'Amato; Hillary Clinton obliterated her Republican opponent in 2000.
Pataki himself was re-elected in the 2002 gubernatorial race with an unimpressive 49 percent of the vote against a lackluster opponent.Despite these failures, Pataki continues to receive praise from portions of the press casting about for a Republican who they hope might continue to "grow" (i.e., move left) and become nationally influential. Shades of Christine Todd Whitman, another liberal Republican whose fawning press far outran her appeal to voters. Governor Whitman fell under the media-created spell sufficiently to convince herself she had a shot at the Republican Vice Presidential nomination in 1996. Pataki ,too, has periodically been swept up in such fantasies. In 2000, he briefly considered himself Presidential timber, and he persists in Fancying that he might be the next Veep or Secretary of Some thing-or-Other. Surprisingly, some libertarians have encouraged this by turning in positive reviews of the governor's economic stewardship that are based purely on his rhetorical statements, or earlier actions that have now been reversed.
Pataki's actual record is not impressive. How can a tax-and-spend politician who has allied himself with corrupt unions, big government leeches, enviros, and pro-abortion and pro-gay-rights leftists honestly believe he has a shot at winning favor with America's GOP voters? When the Republicans convene their national convention in New York City in 2004 to crown their nominee, they will find themselves hard in the middle of an economic mess that Pataki's excessive tax and spend policies have created. Let's see the Peekskill Peacock do a mating dance under those conditions.
Thomas More, the patron saint of politicians, observed: "When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos."
Governor Pataki abandoned his political principles, and did economic and cultural damage to his state in the process. All the pandering and Madison Avenue promotion in the world won't paper over that. By deserting mainstream Republican principles, George Pataki has forfeited his seat at the leadership table of the party of Ronald Reagan.
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