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 ...
Many millionaires (whether Democrat or Republican) are often consumed with guilt over their riches, and thus feel the need to fork over more and more riches as a means to assuage their subconscious guilt.
so it is with this California goof.
Why doesn't this guy move to NY. He'd love the new millionares tax not to mention all the hidden taxes about to hit.
And when Republicans return to power he’ll promptly switch back. Two faced idiot.
He figures you can’t tell the Democrats from the Republicans today anyways.../half-hearted sarc.
I suspect he smells something in the air; he wants to be on the side where the power is (or will be).
Shelby Steele has a great book, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, that speaks directly to the dangers of misplaced guilt and it's corrosive effects on society.
It's a different topic, but I think it applies here as well.
If you are reading this, Mr. A., I fully understand your leaving the Republican party, but I can’t understand why you would sign up with Democrats. I wish you would reconsider that. The Democratic Party platform is very wicked.
"has given up being a fake Conservitve and reverted to type... Liberal."
Why do MSM rags always act soooo astounded when a commie comes out of the closet?
Born rich or earned it?
Guilt-for-wealth seems to be the domain of a lot of trust-funders.
Another RINO joins the right herd.
Too bad somebody can’t think of a way to tax stupid
funding crisis = solved
He’ll never be trusted by the ‘rats. But they’ll take his money.
Whatever.
How about a head tax on liberals?
Welfare a moral entitlement that can never be withdrawn? This guy is a real fruitcake no matter what flag he flies!
I would have two questions for him:
1) First, a general question: Liberals always carp about the rich not paying their “fair share”; So, what IS a “fair share” of total income that should be paid in taxes? Give me a number!
2) Next, a California Specific question: You complain that Republicans have drawn a line in the sand and said “no more taxes”. If the current level of taxation is not where Republicans should draw the line, exactly where should they draw the line — 100% of everything that the Federal Government doesn’t take?
If there is no place that a line should be drawn in California, then there is an underlying assumption that ANY level of taxation is morally acceptable ... even up to 100% ... and that is called slavery.
If you can’t give me a number, then trying to have it both ways - confiscate as much money as you can without admitting that you are advocating slavery.
He believed that the people who voted for all the taxes and called themselves Republicans WERE Republicans.
Howard, wake up. Those “Republicans” who betrayed the GOP WERE NOT REPUBLICANS, they were undercover Democrats. Now, you’re sleeping with the real enemy. Wake up!
"I hate the attitude that welfare, once granted, is a moral entitlement that can never be reduced.
My bad. Read it too quickly — thought he said “I HAVE the attitude ....” Oh well, he’s still a nut!
Then we are in agreement.
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