| Tedisco, who fancies himself a fiscal conservative/tax-cutter Reagan/Limbaugh type, has temporarily forsaken his six-figure Assembly job to run for Congress in the March 31 special election in NY-20 against excellent Democrat Scott Murphy.
The editorial notes that national economic policy is the No. 1 issue in the special election and that Tedisco's claim
that his position on what just might be the most contentious issue in Washington is a "hypothetical question" raises serious questions about his qualifications to serve in Congress.
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If the issue here is Mr. Tedisco's unfamiliarity with what's a lengthy and complicated piece of legislation, he might start by reading it.
The way he went on and on with a filibuster-length non-answer at a campaign appearance in Queensbury on Tuesday has us wondering how much of the legislation he could have read in the meantime. Has he never voted on the bills that get rushed through the Legislature without reading them?
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So, what's his problem? Why's he on the fence? Why can't he level with the voters?
Tedisco no doubt has his finger to the wind -- a recent Siena College poll showed that 75 percent of New Yorkers support the stimulus law.
But, on the other hand, conservative Republicans like himself remain fiercely opposed to it, and hope that it fails so they can have a campaign issue in 2010.
From Tuesday's New York Times:
At least some Republicans have calculated that if the Obama plan does not work, they will be able to say they warned against it. And if it does, they can hope that voters will have moved on to other issues before the next Congressional elections, in less than two years.
"The American public," said the House Republican whip, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, "is not going to be waking up one morning four years from now and say: 'What a great economy! It all goes back to that vote that the Democrats passed on the stimulus bill.'"
Tedisco's first ad is out, and it does not mention that he's a Republican. That's how much the GOP brand has declined even in New York's most Republican Congressional District.
But one thing voters in the 20th can be sure of, even if Tedisco lies about it, is that, if elected, Tedisco will be a lock-step vote for Boehner, Kantor, and the rest of the House Republicans in obstructing President Obama on every issue.
Just as he surely would have on the stimulus, had he been in Congress since Jan. 1. |
