On a day when the Blunt administration has begun answering its critics on the airwaves, a viewer points me to a recent article in The Weekly Standard, written by conservative commentator Fred Barnes.
The column fervently defends the Blunt administration's record on spending, the economy and shrinking government. "His spending cuts helped produce a $80 million dollar surplus this year. Along with sweeping tort reform and a crackdown on excesses in workman's compensation, his no-new-taxes approach improved the business climate and drove down unemployment," writes Barnes in the May 22nd issue.
Barnes pulls no punches on the Governor's persona and notes Blunt is "neither glamorous nor especially charismatic," but adds that Blunt subscribes to a simple rule of politics, "no pain, no gain."
The column showers Blunt with praise, calling the nation's youngest Governor, courageous, unapologetic, efficient and gutsy. "Without the Medicaid cuts, Matt Blunt's poll numbers would be among the highest in the country," says one of his House allies.
To exemplify Blunt's efficiency and attention to detail, Barnes notes a meeting on state-owned vehicles. "Many states don't know how many cars and trucks they own. Until last week, Missouri was one of them. A survey of state-owned vehicles in California couldn't account for 10,000 of them," Barnes writes.
But he says the Governor made it a priority to discover the exact number of cars the state owns: 10,834. "That's a ridiculous number of cars for the state to own . . . knowing how many cars we have is a victory in itself," Blunt said in the meeting.
But Barnes also offers a cautionary warning: "This may be the high-water for Republican control. Republicans expect to lose a few legislative seats this fall . . ."
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