California Conservative

Alex McClure has posted his analysis of the second Swann-Rendell debate here. Alex was favorably impressed with Swann’s performance. Here’s some of Alex’s observations that stood out for me:

On property taxes, I really wasn’t paying attention because the guy asking the question sounded like he just swallowed helium. Not really. He asked Rendell about his failure to solve property taxes. Rendell answered his typical nonsense of how he has cut property taxes. (Why Republicans enacted his bill is beyond me.) Swann retorted well, pointing out that Rendell’s plan falls short of real reform and does not address the underlying structural problem. In short, Rendell sounded like a hack, Swann like a statesman.
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On the pay raise, Rendell said it was a mistake for Ridge to give a pay raise. Gee Ed. That was how many years ago? Moreover, it has nothing to do with it. Swann, as usual, hit on the issue very hard. His point that Rendell fails on his promise to cut property taxes but finds time to raise the salaries in Harrisburg exponentially. Swann turned the experience issue against Rendell, asking how someone who is an attorney and a district attorney could have failed to understand what he was signing.
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Now tomorrow, Ed Rendell’s shrills in the Philadelphia media will glow with how well Rendell did and how he’s wonderful, how lucky we are to have him, etc., etc. The truth is that Swann, once again, matched or beat Rendell in this debate.
In 2002, Rendell rolled out of Philadelphia and the four suburban counties with a 500,000 vote majority. If Swann can reduce that to 300,000 he certainly has a chance to win on election day.

I haven’t seen either of the debates but it’s obvious to the trained eye that Rendell’s in trouble, specifically on the reform issue. Swann is charismatic and he’s looked more poised and statesmanlike according to Alex’s liveblogging of the debates. Another hint that Rendell knows he’s in trouble is something I point to here:

If re-elected Nov. 7, he’ll propose reducing the size of the Legislature, enacting limits on how much one contributor can donate to a political campaign and creating a “citizens committee” to redraw House and Senate district lines after the 2010 census. Before becoming governor in January 2003, Mr. Rendell had opposed term limits for state legislators.

This is proof that he knows that he’s seen as an old-fashioned politician, not as an outsider bent on reforming a flawed system. He’s seen politicians lose their seats in the primaries. He knows that Lynn Swann tagged him as not being serious about reform. So he’s talking about reforms. Here’s another bit of proof that he isn’t serious about reform:

Regarding term limits, he said, “I was a little naive when I came here. When [legislators] look at the job as a career, it makes it difficult for them to do the right thing.”

There’s a number of adjectives I’d use for Mr. Rendell. Naive isn’t one of them. He’s a career politician. He’s just finishing up his first, and hopefully only, term as governor. Before that, he chaired the DNC. Before chairing the DNC, he was twice elected mayor of Philadelphia. Rendell was elected District Attorney of Philadelphia in 1977 before running for governor. He’s got presidential aspirations. He’s the quintessential career politician. Now Pennsylvanians are supposed to believe that he didn’t understand that career politicians had difficulty “doing the right thing”?

By starting his reform talk the morning after he’d gotten bloodied by Swann on the reform issue, he’s told me that Rendell’s worried about getting beaten bloody with that issue. Expect Swann’s momentum to continue to build. Rendell is a ‘machine politician’, meaning he thinks he’s invulnerable because he built a political machine in Philadelphia. It isn’t that he’s a great politician; it’s that his machine has helped him in the past.

The trouble with political machines is that they tend to not deliver when pitted against a man with the truth.

Technorati Tags: Election 2006, Swann, Rendell, Reform

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 12:52 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, DNC, Domestic Policies, Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.