McMaster fumbles the snap on cigarette tax

The McMaster for Governor campaign — a comedy of errors. Atty. Gen. Henry McMaster has flubbed one issue after another in his run for governor, and can’t seem to stop himself from doing it again. Either his political instincts disappeared overnight a few months ago, or his advisers are giving some really wretched advice. McMaster’s latest political impression of Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford is yet another example.

For a while, the General Assembly has struggled to pass a tax increase on cigarettes that would bring South Carolina up to the national average. It’s not an unreasonable policy. Even though we fell victim to Demon Nicotine, ciggies will kill you. Heart disease, lung cancer, you name it. Increasing the cigarette tax just seems like the soundest idea coming out of the intersection of Main and Gervais in some time.

This year, it really could happen. In a story in The Independent-Mail, Sen. Thomas Alexander said a bill to put South Carolina on par with other states is on pace to be fast-tracked. That’s good news for raising cigarettes to a price point to where people will quit, and help pay for the health care costs that come from long-term smoking that the state has to deal with.

But don’t tell McMaster it’s a good idea. We have this image in our head of him reading that story and letting out a Colbert-esque, “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” Because, God forbid we raise taxes on anything, especially something that will kill you and drains the state coffers.

Attorney General Henry McMaster, spurred by a weekend of back-and-forth discussion on the issue with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Rex, said Monday he would not support raising the tax, spokesman Rob Godfrey said.

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About three-quarters of state residents support raising the tax to $1 a pack, from its current 7 cents a pack, according to a 2008 survey by the Republican-leaning polling firm Public Opinion Strategies. The poll was conducted for the S.C. Tobacco Collaborative, a coalition of nonprofit and public health groups that support raising the cigarette tax to cut smoking rates.

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“Henry McMaster is not raising taxes under any circumstances,” Godfrey said, noting McMaster had signed a national anti-tax pledge. “It’s a good way to make a bad economy worse.”

If the Attorney General appeared on “Car Talk,” one of the Magliozzi brothers would be giving him a dope slap. Hey — there’s a difference between being for cutting taxes and small government, and being so foolish as to think keeping cigs as cheap as possible is actually smart thinking.

And while we’re not always on point with former The State editorial page editor Brad Warthen (his ambivalence toward football can’t be processed over here), he nailed the hell out of this insanity today, writing:

So basically, Henry is trying to out-wingnut the others in his party, to establish himself as SO anti-tax that he won’t, under any circumstances, raise the one tax that three-quarters of the state’s voters say should have been raised to the national average years ago.

That is sufficiently extreme to remove Henry from the ranks of people who deserve to be governor. As you know, some time ago I completely lost patience with people who didn’t want to raise the tax to the national average. To oppose raising it at all is just… indefensible.

Warthen goes on to say it has nothing to do with Supt. of Ed. Jim Rex and Rex’s announcement of his support for raising the tax. True enough. And McMaster just gave his opponents a massive club with which to beat him with from here on out.