Establishment politician Michael Roberson had a rough week last week, capped off by Jon Ralston’s scathing column about his bogus tax-cut claim, which PolitiFact rated “false.”
Roberson is still fending off allegations of improper campaign finance activity and a newly released internal GOP poll shows Roberson a distant third– nearly 30 points behind Danny Tarkanian and even losing to Michele Fiore. Yes, that Michele Fiore.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Ralston Reports: GOP leaders try to rewrite history rather than defend actions
By Jon Ralston
April 3, 2016
Excerpts:
• Truth is the first casualty of any political war, and the Republican primary season already has seen the facts of last session’s tax increase blown to bits.
• Two Republicans who backed the revenue/education reform plan and now seeking higher office are trying to rewrite history with the Orwellian claim they are tax cutters, apparently having had their backbones removed so they can be more flexible. This craven demagoguery by state Senate Majority Leader Michael Roberson, running for Congress, and Assemblyman Erv Nelson, seeking a state Senate seat, gift-wraps an issue for one-dimensional, inferior opponents who have pounced.
• This is shameful for two protean pols who have evolved admirably from their own no-tax-nohow stances only to now take the path of tax resistance. In so doing, they have given cover to the enemies of change, to the Norquistian automatons who have no new ideas to go with their no new taxes. Roberson and Nelson, through a disingenuous dodge, are making it easier for their opponents, Danny Tarkanian and Victoria Seaman respectively, to gain traction.
• It seems clear that both men have not coincidentally relied on the same false claim, which Roberson made at a candidate forum and Nelson made in campaign literature: That they “permanently cut taxes for over 95 percent of Nevada’s businesses,” as Roberson asserted last month.
• If Roberson, Nelson and others don’t own it, they deserve to be the last casualties of this war on June 14.