Following the end of the 2011 Legislature, my friend and political pundit Steve Sebelius wrote the following:
"That brings us to the Americans for Tax Reform pledge overseen most vigorously in Nevada by my friend Chuck Muth. He said in a recent Internet message that liberals hate the pledge because it's effective. All Republicans who signed the no-tax pledge ended up voting against taxes, Muth reports.
"Of course they did. And it's a fair bet none of them even considered any other course. That doesn't make them courageous, smart or good legislators. It just makes them inured to reasonable counter-arguments. And in the end, it made them wholly irrelevant, because who needs to negotiate with those who cannot compromise, especially when they comprise a minority of a minority?"
Gotta respectfully disagree.
The pledge signers absolutely were courageous. In this day and age of politicians never taking a firm principled position on any issue, to take such a stand - incurring the wrath of the left, most lobbyists and the liberal media in the process - takes considerable political courage.
Secondly, Sebelius maintains that the pledge signers were rendered "wholly irrelevant" at the end of the session. Well, not exactly.
The power of the pledge isn't so much in an individual signing the pledge, but in electing a sufficient number of pledge signers to thwart "any and all efforts to increase taxes." Even though six of the 10 Republicans in the Senate actually signed the pledge, when all 10 united as a bloc to oppose the extension of the sunsetted tax hikes, they were extremely relevant.
Indeed, for most of the session, tax hikes were dead, dead, dead ... thanks to unified opposition. And if just two of the four Senate sell-outs had kept their word and opposed extending the sunsets, there'd have been no extension of the sunsets. Period.
Look, legislating is a counting game. If there are eight pledge signers in the Senate, the tax hiking side can't get the two-thirds supermajority it needs to raise taxes. It's simple math. The only reason pledge signers were "wholly irrelevant" at the end of the session is because we were two pledge signers short.
All that said, why is it that only conservatives are supposed to compromise their principles? Did Democrats compromise on ending collective bargaining, school vouchers, ending the organized labor welfare program known as "prevailing wage," or reigning in lawsuit abuse?
And did Democrats compromise on not raising taxes?
Of course not. Only Republicans seem to "compromise" on core issues that are critically important to their base. And what the last-minute cave-in on the tax sunsets by four nonpledge signing GOP senators showed is that it's not enough to just elect more Republicans; taxpayers need to elect better ones, as well.
• Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach who blogs at www.MuthsTruths.com. He may be reached at chuck@citizenoutreach.com.
