Henry McMaster just went off the deep end in an apparently desperate bid to stand out in the GOP crowd for governor.
For years, I’ve been talking about what a good attorney general Henry has been, particularly considering that he was our fourth choice for the job. (We endorsed someone else in the primary, then someone else again in the runoff, then the Democrat in the general.) We had worried that he would continue to be the pandering party chairman we had seen in his years in that post.
But as it turned out, he was a refreshing departure after the headline-grabbing shenanigans of Charlie Condon. He was a sober, serious, conscientious AG who resisted the temptation to grandstand for the most part, and did some really good things such as his domestic-violence initiative.
A leading Republican candidate for governor said Monday he would not support raising South Carolina’s cigarette tax – the nation’s lowest – under any conditions.
Attorney General Henry McMaster, spurred by a weekend of back-and-forth discussion on the issue with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Rex, said Monday he would not support raising the tax, spokesman Rob Godfrey said.
Rex has proposed raising the tax by $1.24 a pack to the national average, using the more than $200 million raised to pay for health care and to avoid requiring teachers to take a week of unpaid leave.
So basically, Henry is trying to out-wingnut the others in his party, to establish himself as SO anti-tax that he won’t, under any circumstances, raise the one tax that three-quarters of the state’s voters say should have been raised to the national average years ago.
That is sufficiently extreme to remove Henry from the ranks of people who deserve to be governor. As you know, some time ago I completely lost patience with people who didn’t want to raise the tax to the national average. To oppose raising it at all is just… indefensible.
Folks, this isn’t about Jim Rex’s plan. I have my own doubts about what Rex proposes to do with the money. But he is certainly, unequivocally right about wanting to raise the tax. As I’ve said for years, this is the one tax that needs to be raised regardless of what you do with the money — even if you burn it. That’s because it is an established fact that wherever you raise the cost of a pack of cigarettes, fewer kids take up the habit and become lifelong addicts.
This is simple; it’s obvious, and to oppose raising the tax at all is absolutely inconscionable.
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Being conservative is being redefined by today’s Republicans as never having to raise taxes.
Whether or not you believe that the cigarette tax should be raised or that taxes in general are too high or too low, it is completely unreasonable to say that taxes should never be raised “under any conditions”.
Supporting unreasonable people is what is absolutely unconscionable. And today, that increasingly means supporting Republicans.
I agree the cigarette tax should be raised for all the reasons Brad has cited. But there is another side during this recession. First of all any tax, even a good tax, will impede spending and that’s what we need to be doing more of to pull out of the recession. Given the addictive nature of tobacco it’s likely to have only a minimal deterent effect. Hence people will still smoke and will be left with less money to spend on other things. That will have the effect of slowing the economy.
McMaster could argue along those lines and he would have some degree of respectability. But his dogamatic stand on this particular issue just makes him come across as obstinate.
They can raise the cigarette tax as high as they want in my view with one stipulation – the money cannot be used for anything but paying off debt. Using it for any ongoing expenditures is a mistake.
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen — if bud, Doug and I are all for it, you really have to be OUT THERE to be against. (And I’m counting Doug and me as agreeing even though he wants to be prescriptive about how the money is used and I don’t.)
And bud, don’t worry — the research is pretty conclusive that fewer cigarettes will be bought if the tax is raised. It’s been demonstrated that every 10 percent increase in the price reduces youth smoking by about 7 percent, and smoking overall by 4 percent.
bud-If you want to get real about it, smokers tend to cluster on the economic end with a very high marginal propensity to consume.Their spending is far less elastic than, say, Mercedes buyers.
I’ve got no problem with raising the cigarette tax, or for that matter, regulating cigarettes like we do liquor. I know that thanks to all these tax reductions the ‘safety net’ in SC is now imaginary, and our most helpless are now in danger. I don’t have extra money, but I’m willing to pay more to keep these people protected. I’d also like to see better roads and schools. Simply refusing to fund these areas because they aren’t more efficient will not make them more efficient.
Well put, Karen. It’s like someone wrote in a State op-ed that we keep measuring educational progress as if somehow that will make it happen.
(Sigh) According to a bit in The State this morning, Joe Wilson was engaged in behind-the-scenes for some stimulus funds for pet projects, while publicly opposing the overall package.
tax alcohol. you’ll make more money