The Truth About Jan Brewer
Operator Dan: I am going to try and write more often about Arizona politics, mostly because we have been in the national news so much lately. Also, when the lamestream media discusses politics in my state, they get so many things wrong it makes you wonder if they could even find Arizona on the map.
These days, there isn’t a week that goes by that there isn’t a major news story about my home state of Arizona. From SB 1070 to a new federal lawsuit against the state (the newest being this absurdity), Arizona has emerged as the primary battleground over almost every hot button issue this election year. As a result, our governor Jan Brewer (R) has become a national figure and a hero for many conservatives around the country, primarily because she signed SB 1070 into law. Its also appears that despite a terrible debate performance that Governor Brewer will utterly crush he Democratic opponent Terry Goddard by upwards of 15-2o points.
However, Jan Brewer is neither a solid conservative nor someone Republicans should hold up as one of the future leaders of the party. This is something that too many Republicans on the national level have ignored when lauding her for her support of SB1070.
More below the fold.
In the early spring before the signing of SB1070, Jan Brewer was pretty much politically dead. Most polls at the time had her not even winning her primary, much less the election against Terry Goddard. This was not without good reason.
In order to balance the budget and prevent further cuts to state services, Brewer decided to support an 18 percent sales tax hike to specifically fund education and certain emergency services. Many conservatives like State Treasurer Dean Martin (who first ran against her in the primary and was leading her for awhile) advocated using two state funds that had literally hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in them to balance the budget and avoid a tax increase. Many conservatives were also arguing that the budget crisis created a chance for Republicans to make serious reforms to Arizona’s state government that the Right had been advocating for years. However, Brewer stubbornly pushed forward with the tax hike, which was support to go to the voters in May 2010. This killed support for Brewer among many Arizona Republicans and rightly so. (On a side note, the sales tax increase did not balance the budget and now there is discussion of passing another one…great its not like we have the second highest poverty rate in the country right now).
Then came the SB1070 freight train. Brewer never openly supported the bill when it was working its way through the legislature. She only announced her support of the bill shortly before she signed it and this is now clearly a result of very meticulous political calculation. Brewer’s signing of SB1070 changed politics in Arizona overnight. The passage of Prop 100 which raised the sales tax rate by 1 percent (which overall is an 18 percent increase) two weeks later was barely news, even in Arizona. Suddenly, Brewer was a hero and by June two of her strongest primary opponents had “suspended” their campaigns. She easily won the Republican Primary on August 24th and will probably will the general election November 2nd.
My problem with Brewer is that conservative pundits like Sean Hannity, Limbaugh, and even O’Reilly hold this woman up as some type of conservative hero simply based on one issue. A closer examination of her record shows otherwise.
Category: Politics
O. D.,
Thanks for the further details and insight. It’s interesting to read the politics from someone who actually works and lives there, as opposed to the pundits who view from afar only briefly.
Unless the dem candidate is one of the few reasonable ones in existence, anything would be better than another demcong in office. The only real question is the degree of difference between them. You would never have seen a dem take the stand on the wetbacks that she did, and that is something.
Wow! And I do follow stuff, relatively closely. That.sucks!
I’m also an Arizona resident, I grew up here and Jan has my full support.
I don’t have the time to get into the meat and potatoes of this at the moment, but suffice to say I disagree with you fairly strongly OD.
I would encourage anyone wondering about Jan Brewers politics to look up her political history. Her political life in AZ started in 1983 and it’s always been largely conservative. Anyone claiming that her support for SB1070 is simply political would do well to examine her record on illegal immigration, most notably starting with Prop 200 back in 2004.
And as an avid gun enthusiast, I especially support Brewer. In the space of 12 months she signed 4 bills in support of gun owners and self defense. One of these bills removed the licensure requirement for law abiding owners who wish to carry a concealed firearm in Arizona, making us one of only 3 states where there’s a law providing for that.
She’s definitely conservative, she’s definitely focused, and she’s definitely been good for the State as a whole during her career.
I don’t live in Arizona but you have to admire her courage in signing the immigration bill and fighting the lawsuit from of all places Washington DC. Illegal immigration is the biggest problem for Arizona and the US. What is at stake here is whether Western civilization will continue or be destroyed. I see no such fight in other but a few states. She signed the bill in the face of strong opposition from the national establishment and media. And she never backed down.
In 1986 Reagan signed the illegal immigration amnesty bill while our congress told the nation this was necessary to solve the immigration problem and promised it was a one time amnesty. Why the promise. There was no truth in that statement or promise from Washington. After that the congress did nothing to slow illegal immigration but aided in the exporting of US industry and jobs to the third world and funded aid to illegal immigrants. Why the promise, because they knew amnesty was not popular with the majority of the American people and it was in opposition to the purpose of existing laws that were passed because of pressure from US citizens.
If she was not a conservative she is now. There is no turning back from her support for 1020 and her consistent criticism of BO.
Sounds kinda of like my governor, Chris Christie, and people outside our state have little of an idea about how our state got into this predicament in the first place.
Hint, Hint, it goes back thirty years.
well a RINO can be good once in awhile. She only signed the bill because as governor she directly see’s the devastation that the illegals bring with them.
I liked the gun bill, but she’s going to destroy the state’s economy with tax increases and then what? Hope the illegals leave because of the crappy economy?