No Car Tax, 2005 Edition

Tomorrow’s Washington Post report -- I haven’t read other newspaper reports of the supposed “question of trust” yet -- is enough to make one question whether the GOP has become unhinged or The Post and likely other media are trying desperately to “[breath] new life into Virginia's tax debate at the beginning of an election year.” I’m betting it’s the former.

First of all, Larry Sabato is dead wrong on this. It is not "a good election-year stance for Republicans. It's what their folks like to see, and they remember a GOP landslide in 1997 [based] on three words: 'No car tax.' "

House Speaker Bill Howell (left) and Del. Vince Callahan speak at a news conference where they revived the No Car Tax pledge. Anti-tax stallwarts Dels. Scott Lingamfelter (left) and Jeff Frederick (right) stand dutifully in the background.

As President Bush said, fool me once and shame…on….fool me…well you can’t fool me. Well, maybe you could fool him, but this “no car tax” stance will not fool most voters. All it does is reveal the GOP leadership in Virginia for what it is: lacking any substantive agenda, any vision, any modicum of respect for the voter. Do Sabato and Speaker Bill Howell, who proved himself last year to be an inept politician totally out flanked by the governor and the Senate, actually think voters who were more engaged than ever last year are going to fall for the same refrain they heard was the cause of the budget deficits?

As The Post story points out, Howell is trying to have it both ways. He wants to max the car tax and yet provide a larger transportation package. A free lunch from the flat earth bunch.

Either The Post listens too much to Sabato or it is pulling our leg.

Tuesday's GOP announcement also positions the car tax as a preeminent issue in the 2005 campaign for governor between Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore (R), the leading candidates for their parties' nominations.

Ending the car tax was one of the most popular campaign issues in Virginia history. In 1997, it quickly caught fire in vote-rich Northern Virginia, where many families own several expensive cars, and swept Republican James S. Gilmore III into the governor's mansion.

Do they think voters can’t learn a lesson? It’s been eight years since Gilmore’s election. During that time, we’ve seen the K-12 schools struggle to jump through the No Child Left Behind and SOL hoops as school buildings crumble. We’ve seen school overcrowding and teacher shortages. Our premier universities -- and now most of them -- want to opt out of state funding and state control. Since 1997, the kids that were going to UVa. now will be lucky to get into JMU, Mary Washington and other second tier schools. Traffic has become much worse, Medicaid rolls are rising and health care has grown much more expensive. Meanwhile, real estate taxes are soaring to compensate. And they expect the voter to roll back to the 1997 mindset and vote for the GOP based on a "No Car Tax" pledge?

If you notice, The Post and many other papers, always call the same usual suspects they position as non-partisan seers. If it’s not Sabato, it’s Steven Farnsworth of MWU or VCU’s Robert Holsworth. They get into a rut asking the same guys to gaze into their crystal balls. I guess the profs feel compelled to come up with something provocative. But if the others also think this is good politics for the GOP and the defining issue of the next election, I certainly wouldn’t hire them as campaign managers.

At least Howell is somewhat consistent. Once a bush leaguer, always a bush leaguer. But Vince Callahan used to be the respected dean of the Northern Virginia delegation.

House Appropriations Chairman Vincent F. Callahan Jr. (R-Fairfax) said Republicans in the House will seek to undo the legislation that stopped the car-tax relief plan from reaching its original goal of paying for 100 percent of the tax on the first $20,000 of a car's value.

"We pledge now to end this interruption and honor our commitments to the people of Virginia," Callahan said. He said the tax could be phased out over six years.

This is the guy who voted for the tax hike before he voted against it and then reportedly sent a letter to his constituents taking credit for all the new money that was coming to his constituents.

Gov. Warner was almost caught speechless.

The move caught Warner and his allies in the Republican-controlled Senate by surprise and threatened to ignite the still-simmering tensions of last year, when the legislature battled for months over whether to increase taxes.

In a statement, Warner said the House Republican proposal would "almost certainly condemn us to repeat the same mistakes we've spent three years trying to fix. In one stroke, it would create an entitlement that would quickly grow to be larger than everything we now spend on all our state colleges and universities combined."

Warner said the proposal appears to be the result of "election year pressures."

Yeah, he had to say that. But my guess is he and his staff had to pick themselves up off the floor where they found themselves laughing.

But the biggest disappointment has to be Tim Kaine.

In an interview, Kaine said he supports fully phasing out the car tax but called the House proposal "an election-year thing." He said: "You have to come up with money to fund it. That's what they haven't done this year."

Mr. Kaine, you’ve been blessed. You get to follow a guy who three years ago was considered an inept, overly cautious, over his head political neophyte but who today is considered presidential material. Follow his lead -- and I don’t mean promise a tax cut you don’t really mean. Voters will see through that. Shoot straight. After all, Howell, Callahan and company are swimming in a barrel.

UPDATE: I should go to bed but I thought I’d see how the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported this proposal. It seems to downplay it, pointing out that the votes aren’t there to pass it. Michael Hardy and Pamela Stallsmith also write:

The quickly tossed-together proposal -- it contained no specifics -- was almost immediately dismissed by the governor and the key state Senate leader as irresponsible electioneering.

…"In light of these surpluses and because of our continuing desire to help hard-working Virginians and their families, we are in a position to fulfill the commitments we have made to Virginia's citizens and our local governments," said House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford.

However, they offered no specifics, such as a timetable or total cost.

"We have not worked out the details," Callahan said.

Does this sound strangely familiar to the tax referendum idea that the House leadership quickly threw together before it was laughed out of town?