Crist Fiscally Responsible? Not So Fast

Posted by Chris Moody

He did it again: Florida governor and senatorial candidate Charlie Crist cited Cato’s 2008 Governors’ Report Card as evidence of his fiscal conservative credentials, this time in a Fox News Sunday debate with his primary opponent Marco Rubio.

Trouble is, the report card’s author, Chris Edwards, has gone on the record again and again explaining how Crist has fallen hard off the fiscal responsibility wagon since the report was released two years ago.

The Florida media has publicized Edwards’ correction of the record numerous times since Crist began citing the Cato rating in his political ads. It is difficult to believe that Crist can be unaware of that.

Here’s Edwards in October 2009:

Since I wrote the report in mid-2008, the governor seems to have fallen off the fiscal responsibility horse.

In particular, Crist approved a huge $2.2 billion tax increase for the fiscal 2010 budget, even though he had promised that $12 billion in federal “stimulus” money showered on Florida over three years would obviate the need for tax increases.

About $1 billion of the tax increases are on cigarette consumers, which will particularly harm moderate-income families. The rest of the increases are in the form of higher costs for often mandatory services, such as automobile registration, which is really just a sneaky form of tax increases.

Watch the exchange below. Crist cites Cato at 8:43:

Transcript here.

The Remnants of “War on Terror”

Posted by Jim Harper

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared on Fox News Sunday this weekend to argue against the Obama administration’s plan to try some alleged terrorists in New York courts. He did not acquit himself well.

Giuliani argued, for example, that criminal defendants aren’t tried “at the scene of the crime.” Criminal defendants are almost always tried in the jurisdictions where their crimes took place (not at the actual crime scene, of course). Giuliani’s insistence on misstating basic criminal procedure showed that he was twisting to score points against the administration. This is inappropriate political use of terrorism issues.

But Chris Wallace roasted Giuliani—with quotes from Rudy Giuliani. Of prosecuting the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, Giuliani said: “[Y]ou put terrorism on one side, you put our legal system on the other, and our legal system comes out ahead.” Giuliani said that the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui shows “that we can give people a fair trial, that we are exactly what we say we are. We are a nation of law.”

As he did during his failed presidential campaign, Giuliani appears caught in a terror-warrior time warp. He criticized the Obama administration for eschewing the regrettable phrase “war on terror,” and he betrayed no awareness of what has dawned since 9/11 on the rest of the country: Terrorism seeks overreaction on the part of victim states. Cool, phlegmatic prosecution of terrorists deprives them of rhetorical victories that empower them by drawing others to their side.