What's Wrong with Ohio?

HT to Gary at RightRunner on an excellent piece titled What's Wrong with Ohio?

Money Quote

THEN IT ALL CAME crashing down. In the 2006 elections, Democrats won every statewide executive office except for auditor, including the governorship by a margin of 60 percent to 37 percent. The Democrats picked up a U.S. Senate seat, a congressional seat -- with near-pickups in three others -- a net gain of seven state house seats, and one state senate seat. Republicans still control both chambers of the state legislature, won a December 2007 special election to fill an empty House seat, and have even increased their majority on the supreme court to all seven seats, but most trends aren't in their favor.

Republicans lost Ohio for the same reasons they lost the country: corruption, inability to cope with voter anxiety about the war or the economy, and reluctance to embrace a reform agenda. "Half our elected officials are just Democrat-lite," groused a Medina County GOP Lincoln Day reveler. "What's the point of being a Republican anymore?" The conservative, reformist wing of the state party was never dominant, not even at the height of 1994's revolutionary rhetoric.

More typical of Ohio Republicanism is George Voinovich, who was elected governor with 56 percent of the vote at the beginning of the GOP resurgence in 1990. Voinovich is a cautious moderate, somewhat more conservative on social issues -- he defended the state motto "With God, all things are possible" and says his pro-life position on abortion "is a matter of my immortal soul" -- than on fiscal policy. Consequently, he frequently held the more conservative Republicans in Columbus at bay while muddling the party's image as the taxpayer's best friend.

In addition to some tax cuts, Voinovich supported approximately twenty tax increases while governor. When the state supreme court ruled that Ohio's funding mechanism for the public schools was unconstitutional, Voinovich dutifully backed a $1 billion sales tax increase to mollify his black-robed betters. His record on spending wasn't much better: Between 1991 and 1999, the state budget more than doubled despite anemic population growth. Only six states increased spending more rapidly during this time period. At a 1998 speech at which Voinovich was touting what he claimed was his record fiscal restraint, a Republican activist turned to me and whispered, "I'm a moderate, but c'mon. Cut spending, George!"

Who needs republicans when we already have democrats.