Posted on 02/03/2014 3:48:52 AM PST by Nextrush
Bathing in the expected unanimous endorsement of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee, Gov. Tom Corbett delivered a pragmatic acceptance speech Saturday touting his fiscal management and avoiding social issues that have landed him in hot water in the past......
But the unanimous endorse masked what one dissenter described as "a Tsunami of discontent" within state GOP ranks.
Montgomery County tea party activist Bob Guzzardi, who lingered outside of the main hall, is Corbett's sole challenger for the party nomination.
Guzzardi acknowledged he is a dark horse in the race and even admitted he didn't expect to be included in any pre-primary polls.
But he argued that he would get enough petitions to be on the GOP primary ballot (May 20th), and would then tap into the discord within the party that has seen nearly half of commonwealth Republicans claim they'd rather see a different gubernatorial nominee.
"Once I get on the ballot I think my chances of winnig the nomination are very good because every one of the polls show he can't beat any Democrat," he said.....
During his acceptance speech, he (Corbett) addressed the anti-tax faction of the GOP that disagreed with the tax hikes he instituted to pay for the $2.4 billion dollar transportation package.
"I know that some of you weren't happy with the recent transportation bill," the governor said. "I didn't campaign on that....
"And I looked at it as 1.5 million children get on 31,000 school buses every school day, crossing 10,000 miles of roads that need to be repaired and across approximately 6,000 bridges that were structurally deficient," he added.
"If that isn't reason to get revenue to fix those roads and bridges, you and I are never going to agree," Corbett said to a smattering of applause. "It was important."
(Excerpt) Read more at pennlive.com ...
Well, for starters, Corbett actually passed four consecutive budgets (to Ed Rendell's zero) and p*ssed away a lot LESS taxpayer money.
While I didn’t like Toomey’s bill one iota, given the possibility of the federal government abusing its new authority and the impracticality of forcing people who don’t normally sell firearms to have to pay for background checks, but it’s not as if he was pushing the Brady Bill or something like that.
I think that you’ll find that, when Toomey’s seat comes up in 2016, he won’t have any Republican with a better record than him run for the nomination (although there might be some with *no* record, who of course will claim that they’re batting 1.000, not batting .000).
If you start sitting out elections when you don’t get a Joe Pitts on the ballot (I’m assuming that you find Pitts’s voting record acceptable, although chances are that he has cast at least one vote at some point in his close to 20 years in Congress with which you’ve disagreed), you’re going to sit out *a lot* of elections, particularly in PA. Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good. Mike Fitzpatrick is not perfect, but he’s FAR better than his RINO predecessor Jim Greenwood (not to mention than Patrick Murphy, whose brief time in office Fitzpatrick has bookended). Could Fitzpatrick be a bit better on environmental issues? Sure, but the odds of electing a pro-development Republican in Bucks County who also is as pro-life, pro-gun, pro-marriage and pro-tax cuts as Fitzpatrick is not very high. A better target to go after would be the pro-abortion Charlie Dent in the Lehigh Valley’s PA-15, but it has to be someone with the sort of background that will allow him to be elected to Congress in such district.
I see 95 percent of Republican elected officials faking conservatism or repudiating it ala Charlie Dent.
The Murray-Ryan budget deal last month found no Pennsylvania House Republican in opposition (all for it even Keith Rothfus) to the new tax bill (fees for air travel) that also cut military pensions and extended unemployment benefits.
This bill was opposed by the Tea Party ones who oppose Boehner along with others who are running for US Senate in their various states. It was also opposed by the Democrat progressive Leftists of the Congressional Black Caucus and such.
These budget deals are not the way forward and they resemble European style austerity measures to manage debt.
I suspect that’s all that Washington has in store for us and alongside higher taxes and military cuts we get emotional politics about Obamacare from the GOP that intends to amend it, not end it and from the Democrats emotional arguments about a higher minimum wage so they can divert attention from all the welfare cuts they have to implement to satisfy the creditors of the United States of America.
Just. Doesn't. Get. It.
This is the standard "crumbling schools / bridges / highways / etc." theme that Democrats play every time they want to gouge the taxpayers. Pennsylvania taxpayers already pay more than enough to fix this stuff. It's disheartening to see alleged Republicans falling for this nonsense, and almost certainly it means there is major hand-greasing going on.
Corbett himself admitted when the tax bill went through that it was “bipartisan” and supported by “business” and “labor”.
And why not, the business and labor interests that support the Republicans and Democrats get taxpayer money and some of that gets back to the politicians in campaign contributions.
And who pays for it all, you and me, the taxpayers.
These tax raisers are crazy. They need to cut spending. I hope Corbett skids out in the primary.
And don’t forget that loon Alyson Schwartz is in the mix too.
Corbett hasn’t done anything negative towards PA gun rights. But we DO have a loon as the AG now, who’s first act was to mess with Florida and Virginia reciprocity.
We get a psycho Dem governor in there, and their dream of turning PA into a gun-free zone is one step closer.
If you think it’s bad now just imagine what it could be with Alyson Schwartz as governor.
I’m not willing to take that chance.
I’m voting for Corbett.
I have NO problem with Corbett.
I have a HUGE problem with “activist” democrat Governors like Rendell, and democrats in ANY position of authority of ANY kind.
I never said I thought it was bad. I’ll be backing him too.
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