An ill wind is BREWERing in Arizona

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Many of you have heard by now that Governor Janet Napolitano has been tapped by the Obama transition team to become the new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Napolitano may be Homeland Security pick It is only a matter of official confirmation.

Napolitano would be a vast improvement over Michael Chertoff whose dysfunctional response to Hurricane Katrina bordered on criminal negligence. He should have been forced to resign along with Michael "heckuva job" Brown.

Congratulations to Janet Napolitano. But her good fortune will put the rest of us here in Arizona in a lurch. Under the Arizona Constitution, Secretary of State Jan Brewer (right) will succeed to the Governor's office.

[Yes, I know this is a photo of the Borg Queen from Star Trek: Next Generation, but it is no more falsely misleading than the retouched air-brushed photo Jan Brewer uses on her web site and on official Secretary of State materials. C'mon Jan, who do you think you're fooling? Embrace who you are!]

Jan Brewer was one of the right-wing nutters in the Arizona Legislature (always good for a crazy quote in the local newspapers) before she was able to fool enough Arizona voters outside of her district, voters who had no idea who she was when she first ran for Secretary of State in 1992, that she was a moderate Republican. You can fool some of the people all of the time, or so the saying goes. Brewer did not have serious competition for reelection in 2006, so here we are. Maybe next time the Arizona Democratic Party will take seriously state offices other than the governorship.

The right-wing nutter crowd in the Republican Party has been able to weed out other moderate Republicans whom they derided as RINOS (Republicans in name only) in GOP primaries over the last three election cycles. And they expanded their majority in both chambers of the Legislature in the recent election. The Arizona Republican Party has moved even further to the right and is much more partisan as a result. Now one of their own is about to succeed to the Governor's Office to lead them.

An ill wind is BREWERing in Arizona. Things are going to get ugly over the next two years. This is a crowd that believes in Grover Norquist's dream of shrinking the size of government down to the size "where we can drown it in the bathtub." As the national economy falters under the weight of the failure of the supply-side, trickle-down tax cuts for the rich, no government regulations, anything goes because "greed is good" voo-doo Reaganomics, this crowd believes the answer is to double down and give us more of the same failure. State government is not going to be there to lend a hand up when its citizens are most in need.

I am curious to see how this all will play out. I am sure that Jan Brewer believes this good fortune will give her nearly a two year head start to run as an incumbent for Governor in 2010, and that this will freeze out the primary opponents she anticipated facing had Napolitano completed her term. I don't think so. Tom Horne, John Munger, and a host of past and current elected officials who were exploring running for Governor may still do so.

Should Brewer revert to form and behave as she did when she was a member of the Legislature, she is certain to make political enemies even within her own party. She tends towards totalitarianism. And if she starts going off on crazy rants again, the news media will turn on her.

And who will Jan Brewer appoint to succeed her as Secretary of State? Certainly not anyone she views as a potential rival in the GOP primary for governor. I have heard speculation about several names already mentioned to me, but none of these rumors are confirmed. Everyone is waiting on Napolitano's next move.