After taking in Carney’s “shared sacrifice” budget proposal a couple of things have become clear to me.
1) Carney has no imagination. He isn’t a leader. He is just following along what Jack Markell did, right down to adopting Markell’s January swansong budget proposal wholesale. This budget shows no guts and fewer brains.
2) He doesn’t care about courting Democratic constituencies. The gutting of the Coastal Zone Act in order to preserve “offshore tax shelter” tax rates for wealthy corporations and individuals speaks volumes.
3) Carney is trapped in 1990’s. This budget does court two constituencies – the state chamber of commerce, and “moderates.”
Does he really think that he is going to run a race that ignores Democrats (because he thinks he has those votes tied down) while trying to appeal to the state’s persuadable Republicans? My sense is that he is thinking precisely that because it is what would have worked in the 1990’s.
This budget demonstrates that Carney thinks he can thread the same needle Markell did, being a fiscal Republican and a “Democrat” on social issues. The problem with that is that there is no Gay Marriage on the table to champion. Moreover, Republicans have a legitimate “fiscal conservative” candidate in Ken Simpler. Does anyone (other than Carney) think that he can get to the right of Simpler on revenue and cost cutting? I don’t.
