How others see Gov. Ed Rendell

If Ed Rendell wins re-election to a second term as governor of Pennsylvania, he should issue a proclamation crediting the liberal Philadelphia media for helping him hold on to the governor’s seat despite a shoddy record during his first four years.

Rendell has all the advantages over GOP challenger Lynn Swann. Rendell has $26 million in campaign contributions from lobbyists, special interest groups and corporate fat cats. He’s used $12 million so far to bombard Pennsylvania voters with round-the-clock television commercials since April.

Rendell has also turned the governor’s public information office into the Ministry of Propaganda, churning out daily press releases on how wonderful it is for Rendell to be spending our tax dollars like there’s no tomorrow.

Rendell has a third wheel in his re-election bandwagon. He owns the Philadelphia media market, which reaches half the population of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, already left-leaning, are falling over backwards to find positive, fluffy news about Rendell to fill their pages.

And the TV stations fawn over Rendell every time he stops in front of a news crew to take a bite out of a cheese steak. That’s what amounts to political coverage in the world of "action" news and "eyewitness" news.

You have to step away from the slanted coverage of Rendell by the liberal media to get a true picture of how lame Rendell has been as governor.

One person who doesn’t have trouble seeing that Emperor Rendell has no clothes is Cal Thomas, whose twice-weekly column runs in more than 600 newspapers across the country.

In a terrific piece headlined, "Wisdom and judgment deficiency," Thomas writes about Rendell’s shortcomings in relation to many other liberal politicians who insist on offering opinions on matters they know nothing about.

Here’s the part of Thomas’ recent column that deals with Rendell:

And now for the definition-impaired, the meaning of the word "naive": "deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment." There was plenty of that on display last week in Pittsburgh and in Washington.
At the annual National Conference of Editorial Writers Convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania governor and former general chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ed Rendell, addressed a group of pundits on the subject, "Will the Real Democratic Party Please Stand Up?" After running through standard Democratic boilerplate issues — increase the minimum wage, raise taxes (except property taxes), spend more on education (as if too much is not already being spent with little to show for it) and, curiously, "The Bible has nothing to say about abortion and gay marriage" (but it has plenty to say about sexual relationships and life's value at all stages). Later, Rendell invoked biblical mandates to justify his view that God meant government, not individuals or the church, should help the poor and "disadvantaged."
Rendell was asked what he would do about Iraq if he were president. He said he is not running, but if he were and he won, on the day after his inauguration, "I would go to Iraq and ask to be on TV throughout the Middle East and I'd say, 'We came here with the best of intentions and wanted to create freedom and democracy for all and 3,000 Americans have died. It is clear to me we have become the main problem. I'm going to ask the international community to develop a peacekeeping force and reduce our presence. We're going to help you build houses, provide aid and economic opportunity for your people."'
That isn't a peace plan; it's a plan for surrender. Like liberal Democrats in the 1980s, who believed the best way to handle the Soviet Union was to demonstrate we meant them no harm by unilaterally disarming, Rendell and many of his fellow Democrats believe there would be no consequences for America and the world should we fail to support democracy in Iraq for which millions of Iraqis have voted. Does he seriously believe such a retreat would not be seen as surrender and weakness, playing into the hands of jihadists, who would be emboldened to keep on fighting until they dominated all of Europe and then come after America? This is why liberal Democrats cannot be trusted to run the foreign policy of the United States.

Thomas goes on to point out that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain also suffers from "the naiveté virus." McCain probably killed his chances for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination "by suggesting the United States should be bound by the Geneva Conventions in dealing with stateless terrorists determined to murder civilians," Thomas writes. "Murdering civilians is condemned by those same Conventions, but the jihadists are not persuaded to conform to these treaties."

For those Pennsylvania residents still planning to vote for Ed Rendell on Nov. 7, maybe you should take a trip out of Pennsylvania to clear your head. It appears others see how dangerous political elites like Rendell can be for the rest of us.