Vic Sprouse was once touted as having a political future, until he found he liked talking more about family values than practicing them. He was a rising star of the West Virginia GOP, which may say more about the weakness of their bench than about Sprouse’s qualities as a candidate. Nevertheless, the soon to be irrelevant former Minority State Senate leader has decided to mock Gov. Joe Manchin (D), for – well, if you read Sprouse closely – for being successful.
In a post titled: “I want to live in Joe Manchin’s little world,” Sprouse writes:
For like five minutes, I would love to live in the world that Joe Manchin dwells in… at first and when I first started listening to Joe speak, I really thought he was just spouting platitiudes and he was just a strong cheerleader of our state.
If Sprouse had ever advanced farther in politics or traveled outside of his overpriced gyms, he’d know that one of the things governors of all states do is talk about the positive attributes of their state and the job they’re doing. One of the biggest problems with the West Virginia GOP, and why I believe the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce often is not supportive of their efforts, is the Republicans love to tear down West Virginia. They’re so partisan in their effort to score political points they don’t care if they hurt economic development efforts. States compete for employers and often political and business leaders of a state work together to attract companies. The West Virginia GOP has made a decision – a bad strategy for the state and for politicking – that they will constantly be negative about West Virginia’s economy and government. They badmouth the state in an effort to convince voters they should be given the chance to run it.
Last year, WV GOP Chairman Doug McKinney decreed the party would throw the evangelicals and gun owners under the bus and focus on the economy this election cycle.
“‘Unleashing capitalism’ will be our party platform next year,” McKinney said. “Our philosophy will be, ‘It’s the economy, Stupid.’
“We’ve spent too much time in recent years on gun control and abortion.”
Then John Raese, part time West Virginia resident and occasional darling of the WV GOP, wandered off his party’s script:
“My family has been doing business in West Virginia since 1905. A lot of people have done business and done very well in West Virginia,” he said.
“We have more natural resources in West Virginia than all but two other states, Texas and Louisiana. We have the finest work force of anywhere in the United States.”
That knocked McKinney and his “Unleashing Capitalism” campaign for a loop, the real goal of which is to return to the days when coal barons could exploit workers and break unions, and not be hindered by safety or environmental regulations of any sort.
West Virginia experienced the days McKinney and Sprouse want to return to. They were the bad old days.
In his post, Sprouse is just continuing the WV GOP’s smear of the state’s economic development work with his snide comments about Manchin meeting with business executives. But I think there’s also something personal as well as political about it with Sprouse. It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see Sprouse can’t stand that Manchin is popular with voters and fairly successful at running the state government.
Unlike many other governors across the country who’ve overspent, Manchin’s administration has a budget surplus.
“We’ll miss the downturn of the economy, because of the energy surge and the demand for coal,” Manchin told The Herald-Dispatch’s editorial board. “But if we don’t diversify our economy during the surge, we’ll have problems.”
Manchin said the state’s commitment to pay down debts during his first three years in office was a primary reason why the state will have a $290 million surplus in this year’s budget. But rather than use that money on one-time expenditures, the best option was to use it as an investment in education and diversifying the work force, Manchin said.
“It was a monumental task getting everyone to agree that we should invest $100 million in education,” Manchin said of his Bucks for Jobs initiative. “I can say it was one of the hardest things I have ever done, because everyone had their own ideas for how to spend this money.”
Under the Bucks for Jobs program, West Virginia University will get $35 million and Marshall University will get $15 million, provided both schools can match the funds with private donations within five years.
That’s called investing in West Virginia’s future.
Now I’ve done plenty of criticizing of the governor’s policies at times, but criticizing Manchin for “cheerleading” for the state as Sprouse does is like criticizing a minister for preaching or an artist for painting or a gym owner for folding the towels and clean the sweat off the equipment. It’s part of a governor’s job.
A job, by the way, that Sprouse will never have though it’s a certain bet he once dreamed he would.
That’s the real reason, for five minutes, Sprouse would love to live in Manchin’s world.