With a shuffled lineup of conservatives, bloggers get cozy on Skubick show

Left to right: Trupiano, Hoekstra, Davison, Baerren.

In contrast to the raucous, highly partisan bloggers edition of Public TV’s “Off The Record” in April, the bloggers show this weekend, with a new pair of conservative panelists, was a relatively cozy affair.
Host Tim Skubick replaced the previous GOP representatives, Republican strategist Dennis Lennox and West Michigan Politics blogger Brandon Hall. Lennox said he was traveling in Europe at the time the show was taped and Hall wrote on his Facebook page that he missed the taping due to an emergency urologist appointment.
The replacements were Detroit News blogger Kathy Hoekstra and Jake Davison, president and founder of the Advantage Associates lobbying firm.
In a low-key discussion (see the video here), the panelists found little to disagree with on legalizing marijuana. In addition, the bloggers unanimously named Jeb Bush as the Republican presidential frontrunner and they all predicted Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination, despite the surge by Bernie Sanders.

In comparison, the high-octane discussion in April consisted of a battle between the conservatives and the two liberal bloggers, Tony Trupiano, host of the Tony Trupiano Show on Blogtalk Radio, and Eric Baerren of Michiganliberal.com. Sharp disagreement was the order of the day.

On this weekend’s show, the panel demonstrated some collegiality and across-the-board consensus in predicting that the Legislature will not reach agreement on a new road funding package because the GOP-controlled Legislature will not allow any kind of tax increase for infrastructure repairs.

Interestingly, as the show was taped on June 25, all four were at least partially wrong.
Days later, the state Senate surprisingly approved a roads package that calls for a 15-cent gas tax hike in three increments.  That plan also seems to call for diverting hundreds of millions of general fund dollars to the roads.

The public reaction was reminiscent of the barely luke warm response when Proposal 1 received final approval by lawmakers last December – and proceeded to get clobbered by the voters at the polls on May 5.

This time around, conservative Republicans are furious that Senate Republicans approved a tax hike, and a rather large one at that. Meanwhile, Democrats have denounced the plan, insisting that it will require big cuts in programs and services.

So, maybe the bloggers were right on the money. Maybe there is no way that the Legislature will reach agreement by the end of summer.