Wake Up Call for Gov. Paterson? . . .

The buzz at the AP is that President Obama is requesting Gov. Paterson to withdraw from the NY Governor's race,  feeling that NY is too important a state for the Democrats to lose and that Patterson won't be able to carry it off with his plummeting approval ratings.

Paterson's ratings were very high when he first took office -- when he was using rather conservative-sounding language about how the state's financial house was not in order and that spending cuts were needed.

Paterson's positive ratings became negative when his actions did not match his rhetoric. After he settled in, he became like all the other big-government big-spenders: Cow-towing to powerful interest groups, buying votes with special programs, jacking up all sorts of fees to pay for it all, spending cuts being more window dressing than real (e.g. mandating printing on both sides of a sheet of paper), telling people how they should live their lives (i.e., they were too fat and required a soda tax), and parroting the line out of DC.

I believe that our governor learned something about New York's problems during his many years in the State Senate, and that the bitter-medicine he tried to make us take when he first took office reflected that experience.  

After Paterson got in, he became subject to the same pressures as his predecessors -- and handled things in the same way. Even though he has been doing all the things his party stands for, like a pawn, the King demands that he must now be sacrificed for the good of his party....

Will the Governor wake up and govern like he knows he should, or will he keep playing the game that has led this state to ruin?

See NYCO for another take.