No TELlin'

No more TEL. No more albatross. No more easy puns.

What a difference a year makes. Last year this time I was driving regularly to Columbus to attend meetings of the Coalition for Ohio's Future, dedicated to fighting something called TABOR. The coalition, strong and growing as it was, ran scared. In early polls TABOR was getting approval ratings in the low seventies. TABOR proposals were popping up all over the country as hard right conservatives planning ’06 runs on a radical TINY GOVERNMENT agenda used their sponsorship of TABOR to build name recognition and grassroots support. Word was Blackwell was doing the same thing here. We were bracing for a hard, multimillion dollar fight. We were dreading the double-whammy of TABOR in ’05 and Blackwell in ‘06. Prof. W. and I didn’t just talk about moving out of state, we were actively looking.

Then, miraculously, Blackwell blinked first. Republican leadership, which wasn’t at all happy with TABOR was genuinely scared of RON. They convinced J. Ken to file one day late to put it on the ’06 ballot. J. Ken made with the brave face, but it was pure retreat.

As has been true of retreat through the ages, the TABOR retreat gave J. Ken’s adversaries the advantage. First, voters in Colorado, the only state with a budget cap like TABOR, voted to release themselves from its grip for five years. It was a rebuke so firm that the previous “TABOR or if you prefer TEL” nomenclature changed forever to just “TEL.” J. Ken pretty much ignored TA-, er, TEL throughout the postelection fall, save for the occasional tap with a 9 ½ foot pole. It was bad enough that the Ohio Taxpayer’s Association, one of TEL’s more ardent supporters, ponied up for robocalls to light a fire under Blackwell.

Meanwhile, anti-TEL forces were regrouping and seeking reinforcements. The delay meant more time for the Coalition to talk to local government groups about what a disaster TEL would be for them. More groups came out against it, newspapers constantly denigrated it, and Jim Petro made opposition to it the centerpiece of his primary campaign.

So now it is gone. Maybe. I still haven’t seen legal authority for anyone to remove it from the ballot. Supposedly if the issue committee agrees unanimously it will be removed. All well and good, but if anyone farther out there than Blackwell on taxes and budget wants to sue to reinstate it, it’s an open question whether they will succeed. A lawsuit by the Coalition to knock it off the ballot on technicalities may succeed, but again another group may intervene to defend TEL, leaving it all an open question.

So what does this mean moving forward? For Blackwell it means a radical change in narrative. J. Ken’s story so far was that he was the One True Republican. He was the authentic heir to the Reagan mantle with W’s “Decider” persona layered on top. The economic straights of Ohio were to be blamed, not on the Republican theory of governance, but on pretenders unworthy of the letter R. All of this put Blackwell on the outs with the Republican establishment, which is where he wanted to be. He ran as much against his own party’s lite conservatism as against Ted Strickland.

Oh, um, do-over. Blackwell the decider has now decided his centerpiece is no longer worth pursuing. Blackwell the keeper of the conservative flame has extinguished his most conservative proposal. Blackwell the outsider has now made a backroom deal with the party whose legacy of failure he now inherits.

Republicans are calling this a victory – kind of like the poker player who folds after a bad bet congratulates himself for not chasing his opponent’s raise. True, no TEL is better for J. Ken than TEL. But he’s in a far weaker position than anyone would have dared dream a year ago. Strickland is predictably crowing about it and is hopefully devising strategies to remind people that J. Ken had one idea and has admitted it was a stinker. If Strickland is sufficiently deft, he may be able to taint J. Ken’s other dubious proposals – 65%, leasing out the turnpike – as equally defective products of Blackwell’s policy mill.

Meanwhile, times will be tough in Ohio under Baby TEL. Blackwell’s one victory in this is perpetuating the Ohio’s “Out-of-Control Spending” meme. As someone who has worked with and/or has ties law enforcement, health care, K-12 education and higher education, I can’t see where all that out-of-control money went. If anyone is getting fat outside the bad investment industry, I’d sure like to hear about it. With a rebounding economy and reformed tax structure, things were looking up. Now BabyTel will keep the legislature from replacing what they have cut.

I’ve been digging through the various factoids used to perpetuate the spending meme and will report sometime in the future about what I find. It’s an article of faith among Democratic political consultants that government spending is indefensible. Maybe. But Republicans have spent decades changing the conventional economic wisdom on the government’s role in the economy (and not all for the bad – price controls anyone? I thought not.) Democrats need to devise ways to talk about government activity that go beyond winning the next election or parroting the last focus group. Republicans are winning because they trained for a marathon where Democrats keep running sprints.

I must admit to some pangs about TEL’s demise. The issue was one that prompted me to get into blogging in the first place. My second post ever was anti-TEL. I had planned to blog the hell out of it over the summer. But now, we may be able to engage in a more measured discussion about what we want out of government and what it can provide.

Stay Tuned.