Soccer Dad

Welcome to the sun lies

Pillage Idiot has announced that The Sun Lies has joined me, Maryland Conservatarian and the Baltimore Reporter in the Maryland Blogger Alliance.

In honor of of the new addition let's fisk "Perils of the state's angry politics" by David Nitkin.

There's so much dishonest about the article it's hard to know where to begin.

So why don't I begin with the one honest paragraph in the article?

Experts say it is understandable that political tensions are at an all-time high. Ehrlich is Maryland's first Republican governor in more than a generation. Democrats don't like sharing power, and Ehrlich is playing tough because he is seeking re-election in a state where his party remains outnumbered by Democrats by a margin of nearly 2 to 1.

No one likes to cede power. And when politicians have to, they give it up no more willingly than a four year old gives up his or her favorite toy. And they're likely to cry a lot louder than a four year old does.

The gist of Nitkin's argument is that politics in Annapolis has become more polarized because each party has become more ideological. Of course the only examples he brings are former Republicans who finds Republicans too extreme.

Do the math. Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1 but Ehrlich won 52% of the vote. That means that he took roughly (this is inexact) one quarter of the Democratic vote. He also got the support of a number of former Democratic office holders and he usually works well with Democratic Comptroller William Donald Schaeffer.

On the face of it Ehrlich appeals to a not insubstantial minority of Democrats, so how is it that he has played a role in the polarization that Nitkin laments?

Oh that's right, he fired political appointees left and right. Well actually he retained about 96% of all inherited political appointees. (The Ehrlich administration claims that it has fired about 280 out of 7000 such appointees. This is terrible for those who lose their jobs, but hardly the wholesale firing that Democrats and their media cheerleaders want us to believe.)

Oh and his appointee smeared Mayor O'Malley! Well yes Steffen admitted to spreading the rumor. It's still unclear who started it. And there seems to be a bit of skullduggery that someone close to O'Malley engaged in (possibly with the connivance of a reporter for the Washington Post) in order to draw Steffen out.

There's no point in tying the angry politics to anything national. Does anyone doubt that House Speaker Busch will suddenly see the light and find slots acceptable if they're proposed by Governor O'Malley next year? Why no mention of Maryland's Voting Rights act that questioned the legitimacy of Ehrlich's election in 2002? (Although some other anti-Ehrlich bills are mentioned, none are more nefarious than the voting rights bill.)

And to whom does Nitkin turn to suggest as an alternative to the petty bickering Democrats and Republicans? To certified Angry Left denizen Kevin Zeese who is pushing ahead with his plans to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Yes, exactly the sort of person disenchanted voters will turn to. If they're moonbats.

And finally the Sun hasn't exactly been absent in these partisan tiffs. It has come down in the corner of the Democrats time and again. When Mr. Nitkin and his then colleague, Michael Olesker got careless with the facts, the Governor banned state agencies from talking with either. (Maryland executive branch employees could talk to other Sun reporters and columnists so it was hard to see the "chilling effect" the ban had on journalism. And of course, though the Washington Post hasn't exactly been supportive of the Governor the governor took no action against any of its reporters. Olesker subsequently left the Sun under less than auspicious circumstances. And, speaking of the Washington Post, in its brief supporting the Sun's legal action it compared the Ehrlich administration to a "repressive regime." I fail to see how such hyperbole - that the Sun didn't reject - added to the comity in Annapolis.)

Simply put the article is merely Nitkin's barely disguised complaint that there's no Democrat in the State House. No doubt, if the natural order of things is restored this November Mr. Nitkin won't wait long to start praising the "new spirit of cooperation" in Annapolis. Of course that won't be bi-partisan cooperation. But "bi-partisan" isn't important unless a Republican's in charge.

I hope that the Sun Lies likes this.

And while you're in the mood check out the Hedgehog Report's latest Maryland political news. My only issue here is that those who are questioning Mayor O'Malley's crime fighting strategy probably won't be improving Baltimore's policing either.

Technorati tags: Maryland Politics, Governor Ehrlich.