In Case You Were Wondering Whatever Happened To The

Bush/Cheney 2000 campaign...

...Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Bryce Rauner has decided to take it for a joyride:

From the Chicago Tribune (with emphasis added):

New Rauner property tax ad aimed at suburban voters

For the second time in a month, Bruce Rauner has gone on the airwaves to attack Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn by highlighting one of the most controversial issues on the Republican challenger’s agenda: the idea of freezing local property taxes without voter approval.

In the latest ad, Rauner features several suburban homeowners — a key demographic in his election-year chances — bemoaning their higher property tax bills.

Rauner then appears in the ad, criticizing Quinn and saying he's done nothing to block rising property taxes. “My plan is simple. No more excuses. Freeze property taxes and require voter approval for politicians to raise them,” says Rauner, who is spending more than $500,000 on TV ads this week in Chicago.

...

The problem?

He's selling the same ridiculous Republican fairy tales.

...

But in declaring his plan “simple,” Rauner continues to leave unanswered several questions about his proposal. As governor, Rauner would have no direct control over the property tax levies of local governments and would have to secure legislative approval to impose any limits. That’s something viewed as politically dubious because property taxes are the largest source of revenue for most local governments and school districts.

...

Charles Wheeler, a longtime statehouse reporter and professor of public affairs reporting at the University of Illinois at Springfield, questioned whether the lack of details from the Rauner camp on the property tax and other issues were part of a “cynical” election strategy.

“I can’t believe they’re as uninformed as these things make them sound. It has to be they’re counting on the rest of us being uninformed and taking this nonsense at face value,” Wheeler said.

“Do they want to freeze the levy, freeze the rate, freeze assessments?” Wheeler asked. “How much money does the state get from property taxes? How much goes to the state? Nothing — not a penny.”

...

Rauner also has proposed eliminating the state’s 2011 income tax increase over a four-year term at a cost of billions of dollars in revenue, while promising to boost funding for education and public works. Rauner, however, has not provided details on how he would accomplish that.

...

I am old enough to remember all the way back to olden times just before the Bush Administration set about the important work of vaporizing the Clinton budget surplus, bankrupting the country and pissing away our international credibility.  Back in those days, Republican pundits had a grand old time mocking crazy, Liberal concerns that the Bush economic plans were transparently ludicrous scams cooked up by crackpot wingnut "economists" and billionaires.

Back in those days, Republican pundits like David Brooks made a fine living writing sentences like this -- 

"The real question about the Bush tax cuts, then, is not, Can we afford them? The real question is, Why are they so small?"

-- for which he was never run out of the country.

But being a Republican means never admitting that any history other that St. Ronald Reagan's bodily Ascension to Conservative Heaven exists prior to 2009.

Which means they will just keep reliably falling for the same, transparently ludicrous scams over and over and over again.