Muth: Gibbons should resign

For conservative activist Chuck Muth, Gov. Jim Gibbons' bizarre equivocations on the hotel room tax hike are the final straw. In a blog post and e-newsletter sent this morning, Muth declares, "Time for Jim Gibbons to Resign."

Plenty of liberals have called for Gibbons' head, but these kinds of declarations always mean more coming from one's own ideological camp. Muth, who is not a registered Republican, hasn't exactly been a Gibbons loyalist -- in fact, he's frequently criticized the governor's actions. But until now, he's always held out hope that Gibbons could rehabilitate himself politically based on the one principle Muth holds most sacred and Gibbons claims to: No new taxes.

Now Muth judges Gibbons to have not only definitively broken from that ideal, but to have been unforgivably dishonest about it. Gibbons proposed the room tax hike, claimed doing so didn't violate his opposition to tax increases, and now says he will let the proposal become law without his signature, a move that has infuriated legislators on both sides of the aisle.

On top of everything else, Muth writes -- the scandals, the feuds, the controversial appointments -- this kind of spineless flip-flopping is too much to bear.

Counting off six "strikes" against Gibbons, Muth concludes that the governor can no longer simply be ignored:

"Some people are now saying the governor is 'irrelevant' to the legislative process for the remainder of this session. I disagree. He’s toxic to it. And in the process he’s doing irreparable harm to the Office of the Governor, the state of Nevada, the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

"Botched swearing-in ceremony, botched appointments, botched staffing, botched agenda, botched budget, botched media relations, scandals, a messy divorce, lawsuits and unending investigations. This administration is a Category 4 disaster.

"I voted for Jim Gibbons in 2006. Seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But he’s betrayed our trust. So now it’s time for him to resign. And that’s no lie."

You can find the full essay on Muth's blog.