Over on BurkaBlog I chanced across this framing of the debate over passing the state budget:
Who has more clout: A fictional Texas Ranger and a former major corporate CEO or a cadre of right wing interest groups?
Texas Senate Republicans gave an unabashed nod to the interest groups this week by passing a state budget that balances without tapping the rainy day fund. Instead, the Senate budget relies on accounting tricks and contingent spending. If an economic recovery fails to materialize, even deeper cuts to public education will occur.
The battle was for the senators’ heads and hearts on one side and fear of political retribution on the other. The public school coalition Raise Your Hand Texas ran television commercials featuring Tommy Lee Jones, who starred in the classic mini-series Lonesome Dove, and former GM and AT&T executive Ed Whitacre urging Texans to press against cuts to education. However, when the smoke cleared from the Senate’s budget debate, it was Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans, Peggy Venable of Americans for Prosperity, and Brooke Rollins of the Texas Public Policy Foundation who had carried the day.
The trio also ran commercials urging Republican senators to stick with state spending cuts proposed by the House. But lobbyists and lawmakers tell me the deciding factor was really the threat that the groups would find Republican primary opponents to run against incumbents and make sure the opponents were well financed. “It’s just intimidation,” said former Lieutenant Governor Bill Ratliff, one of the lobbyists for Raise Your Hand.
Well, that’s one way to spin the story. Here’s another way: Liberal pressure groups defeated by actual Texas taxpayers. And the possibility that an incumbent might actually be challenged in their primary? That’s not intimidation, it’s called democracy.
The underlying attitude of that piece seems to be: How dare elected representatives vote for limited government the way their constituents actually want rather than vote for big government the way liberal interest groups I agree with lobby for?
For years Republicans could get away with breaking their pledges to control government spending, knowing that the MSM would fall all over themselves to praise them for their “courage.” What’s changed has been the Tea Party and similar groups actually paying attention and challenging Republicans who break their promises. That’s what’s changed, and that’s what’s helping hold down spending.
No wonder liberals hate it.
Taxpayers can see the end results of the blue state model of big government, higher taxes, and caving in to unions and other liberal interest groups in California. Given the statements of some of the commentators here, California should be doing much better than Texas.
It isn’t. California businesses and taxpayers are leaving in droves to settle in Texas, because our red state economy is weathering the current recession much better than bankrupt, free-spending California.
The red state model is a success and the blue state model is a failure, and making an environment that is friendly to businesses and taxpayers is a far more effective strategy for states than making an environment that is friendly to big government, bureaucrat unions and liberal interest groups.
This is why Republicans are so firmly entrenched in Texas, and why Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in nearly two decades: The red state model works, the blue state model doesn’t.