Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Glenn Cook writes today about the rather undignified and snarky email Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio (R-Reno) sent to Assemblyman Ed Goedhart (R-Amargosa Valley) this week, in which the veteran liberal Republican told the sophomore conservative Republican that his position against tax hikes was meaningless and told him to “be a man.”
Cook notes that Raggio “blew a gasket last week over a relatively innocuous blog entry” which outlined “a well-explained list of four conditions for tax increases: sunsetting any tax hikes; making tax reforms revenue neutral; the imposition of a state spending cap; and limiting federal stimulus money to existing programs and one-shot expenses.”
The columnist accurately categorizes this eruption of “Mount Raggio” as an “overreaction” which highlights the senior senator’s “hypersensitivity” to limited-government conservatives who actually believe in stuff. “The blog entry was so civil it was squishy,” Cook notes. “It didn’t mention Raggio or any other lawmaker by name.”
Cook further notes that Goedhart’s anti-tax position, which Raggio ripped in his Nastygram, is exactly the same position Raggio took just last summer when he was fighting for his political life a heated primary challenge by a conservative opponent.
“Goedhart is doing what legislative Republicans should be doing,” Cook continues, “taking the positions GOP voters elected them to take, putting forward their ideas and principles in the absence of specific proposals from majority Democrats. If they make Raggio uncomfortable, good. He took the expedient path to his final term in office. He told voters one thing to get re-elected and appears ready to do another.”
“The great irony of Raggio’s e-mail blowup is that he’s convinced he’s the real Republican in all this,” Cook concludes. “If Raggio cares a whit about his party, he’ll end the suspense, slap a ‘D’ next to his name and allow Senate Republicans to be led by someone who offers a competing vision of how state government should function — someone who won’t fold just seven days into the session.”
Bingo. Give that man a cee-gar!