Posted on 04/07/2009 12:42:08 PM PDT by SmithL
I missed this last week, but multimillionaire financier Howard Ahmanson, one of the biggest early funders of Proposition 8, has left the Republican Party and become a Democrat.
Kathleen Pender of the Washington Post spoke with Ahmanson for a column.
In a rare interview Thursday, Ahmanson shared some of his thoughts about why he switched parties. In a word, taxes.
Specifically, he was offended by the California Republican Party's insistence during a recent state budget battle that there would be no tax increases for any reason, no matter what. "They're providing one issue, and it's just a very silly issue," Ahmanson told me by telephone.
Ahmanson's hardly a true-blue Democrat just yet. He donated more than $1 million to pass Proposition 8, including $400,000 of the early, critical seed money that put the measure on the ballot in the first place. He told Parker that gays should "come to Christ and then recover."
He said of welfare: "I hate the attitude that welfare, once granted, is a moral entitlement that can never be reduced. And Social Security and Medicare are included in my definition of welfare."
And he's a Bobby Jindal (the GOP governor of Louisiana) for president fan.
Still, the switch is worth noting. Ahmanson sent a column talking about his flip to the Orange County Register's editorial writer Steven Greenhut. In it, he takes issue with California Republicans' focus on taxes.
Well, I think I was reading about the budget struggles and threatened purges in the Legislature, and I was getting more and more tired and disgusted of it, and I realized that, had I been a Republican assemblyman, I could have hardly escaped being purged myself...
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
This is an odd story. A Jindal-for-President fan joining the ‘Rat Party. It makes no sense to me.
“Specifically, he was offended by the California Republican Party’s insistence during a recent state budget battle that there would be no tax increases for any reason, no matter what. “They’re providing one issue, and it’s just a very silly issue,” Ahmanson told me by telephone.”
Makes perfect sense, he’s obviously a weirdo crank. Rich enough that tax increases mean nothing to him.
He wants to hike taxes, so he’s perfect for the rats.
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