DISCUSSION: HOW OUT-OF-TOUCH CAN A PUBLIC OFFICIAL BE?

New Alliance city auditor Kevin Knowles needs to do a little reading of Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI - a conservative think tank). More on this point later.

The STARK COUNTY POLITICAL REPORT (The Report) was astonished to read two things about Knowles from today's news reports.

First, it appears that Knowles intends to be a Republican first, with all else to follow.

Second, he thinks Republicans own fiscal responsibility.

The Report distinctly remembers how many, many "old school" Republicans have condemned government-controlling Republicans (who up to 2006 controlled the U.S. Congress) and who, in Ohio, still control the Ohio General Assembly for their runaway spending.

Governor Ted Strickland (a Democrat) is far more fiscally responsible than any Republican statewide office holder of recent memory.

The Report offers this from Hassett of the AEI:

If you could go back in time to President George W. Bush's inaugural address and add one economic statement, what would it be? For me, there is an obvious answer.

If Bush had promised in January 2001 that the baseline of government spending that he inherited when he took office would be the cap during his term, then we would have a big budget surplus today. It would have been easy to do. He just had to say: "I will not spend one penny more than President Bill Clinton planned to. I will veto any bill that tries to."

If Knowles had merely said that he would be a fiscally conservative auditor, that's one thing. But for him to equate the Republican Party, as in recent times it has practiced governance, to fiscal conservatism means one of two things:

1. He is a rabid Republican partisan who has a huge case of cognitive dissonance, or
2. He is wildly out-of-touch with the real world.

Either way, Alliance is in a real pickle with this guy as auditor.

Question: Where in the world would anyone get the idea that the Republican Party practices fiscal discipline?