Playing The Triangle Isn’t Easy

GOVERNOR’S STRATEGY OF ISOLATING S.C. SENATE HITS A SNAG

FITSNews – May 30, 2007 – For the past few months, Gov. Mark Sanford’s game plan has been to beat up on the ultra-liberal South Carolina Senate while holding his tongue when it comes to the slightly-less-liberal S.C. House of Representatives. It’s called “triangulation,” a political application of the old Arabian proverb, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

By laying off the House and focusing his bully pulpit’s … um … “fire and brimstone” on the Senate, Sanford had been hoping to gain an ally in the budget battle currently raging in the General Assembly.

Sanford’s plan hit its first major snag yesterday, however, when House Speaker Bobby Harrell took the governor to task for joining some State Senators who had gathered to rail on the issue du jour, illegal immigration.

“The governor did not acknowledge all three immigration reform bills passed earlier this year by the House or the immigration reform legislation the House passed last year,” Harrell said in a flurry of press statements issued yesterday from his office. “I wish the Governor had held this press conference last year to stress the House’s lone effort to pass strong immigration reform.”

Aside from the fact that expecting a bunch of South Carolina politicians to somehow solve the immigration problem is a lot like expecting a bowl of molasses to win the Indianapolis 500, it’s interesting to watch as the governor’s growing obsession with low-hanging political fruit is beginning to cost him.

For months, Sanford and his chief of staff Tom Davis have been mercilessly hammering away at the State Senate for its fiscal irresponsibility, largely ignoring the big government leanings of the House of Representatives in an effort to secure a practically non-existent income tax cut.

Talk about pathetic.

With $1.7 billion dollars in new money coming into Columbia, the largely irrelevent Sanford has been reduced to playing people’s egos off one another in an effort to secure a paltry $81 million in income tax relief. And now it looks like our state’s tactically-challenged governor can’t even get that right.

South Carolina should be chopping its job-choking top marginal rate of 7% down to a more competitive 4%, as true fiscal conservatives like State Treasurer Thomas Ravenel have suggested.

Unfortunately, in typical political fashion our governor and state legislature have given up on real tax relief and chosen instead to play footsie with each other on convenient issues they think will garner them banner headlines.

All of which goes to show when you’ve got no rhythm, even an instrument as easy as the triangle becomes exceedingly difficult to play.

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