GOP Pundits Freak Out as Dem Closes in on Rick Snyder in MI Gov Race

Nolan Finley wrote a column Thursday about the poll numbers in the governor's race. As you might imagine, he bemoans the polling in the race and uses it as a club to beat on Democrats (the same Democrats who've made it a competitive race, despite everything that we've been told by every Very Serious Person).

[Democratic Candidate Mark] Schauer, little known and lightly experienced, is scoring with ads that are largely deceptive, but apparently highly effective at moving voters.

[Current Republican Governor Rick] Snyder is still hung up on the quaint notion that facts and performance should matter. He’s been reluctant to counter Schauer with sharp punches of his own, leaving it to the Republican Governor’s Association to remind Michigan of the bad ol’ days when Jennifer Granholm was governor and Schauer was her key henchman in the Legislature.

We'll leave the bit about facts and performances aside for a second, and instead focus on his inherent inconsistency. Within two paragraphs: Mark Schauer is lightly experienced in one, and then becomes Jennifer Granholm's "key henchman" in the Legislature in the next. In fact, when you include Schauer's experience in Congress, he still has more experience in government than Snyder. But, that's not important here. What's important is to include, in as many paragraphs as is possible, attacks on Democrats.

But in regards to facts and performance: Has it not dawned on any of these pundits that what the governor has done in his tenure are things that have not substantially aided most average Michiganders? That his cronyish behavior, coupled with unsuccessful policy initatives that are strictly based on trickle down economics – a failed theory of taxation and business – have turned people off?

Here's a quick list of the governor's greatest hits:

• Shifted the tax burden from businesses to human beings, resulting in a tax hike for many actual people, who have difficulty making ends meet.
• Signed into law a replacement to a voter-rejected emergency manager law that was basically the same, which in essence nullified the election in which people rejected the first one.
• Signed Right to Work after a year of saying that it wasn't on his agenda, and a law that is by and large not popular with Michiganders.
• Has not done anything substantial to repair Michigan's failing infrastructure, despite years of saying that it was his priority.
• Overseen a cut in educational programming funding. The drones at the Mackinac Center are working, hammer and tong, 25 hours a day, to tell you otherwise, but a lot of schools are going to start running deficits because of how education policy has been crafted under this governor. This includes the notorious Skunk Works, in which his crony Rich "I will sue the holy living shit out of you people until you stop saying mean things about me" Baird was revealed to be receiving a paycheck from a slush fund the donors to which are still unknown.
• Didn't take a stand on our ongoing experiment in the Dunning-Kruger effect's unpopular assault as it related to reproductive choice and gay rights. On this, he has been utterly gutless.
• Killed the budgets of local governments through changes to revenue sharing, which has in turn reduced local services and prompted local governments to tell people that Lansing keeps cutting their budgets.

This is his performance, as seen from your average person. An average person couldn't give two sh*ts about whether the budget is balanced on time, but when they see local schools cutting popular programs because of what the state is doing, they tend to blame the governor and think that the people telling them that things are otherwise are simply lying to them.

This is a governor whose silence on the troglodytes in his party has encouraged them. So, an average person who thinks that we shouldn't discriminate against gay people can be forgiven if, seeing the governor refusing to take a stand on homophobia, thinks that maybe he's okay with it.