For Governor Brewer to have any credibility at all, she has to veto this budget

The Republican legislature has apparently passed a budget package that is little changed from the package they passed on June 4 (and held all month) and that Governor Brewer even went to court to force them to send her so she could go ahead with a promised veto.

Since this budget is the same in all its major components to that budget and they didn't give her any of what she asked for in her five point plan (most notably a vote on a sales tax) I believe that she essentially has two choices.

She can sign the bill, and make it plain to everyone that she is a weak Governor who has been rolled by the hoods who run the legislature.

Or she can veto the bill, make it clear that she meant what she said last month, and then sit down with a clean table and negotiate with both Republicans and Democrats who are more interested in getting a budget that recognizes the hard economic realities of this year but won't devastate state schools, universities and services either this year or going forward into the future.

We will know probably within hours what she's really made of.

UPDATE:

She DID veto almost all of it! She signed essentially the minimum amount of the budget that she needed to in order to keep the government running.

Not that I completely trust Jan Brewer (who is still, at the end of the day, a conservative Republican) to always do the best job for the state, and she certainly deserves criticism for not showing more leadership in the months leading up to this debacle, but she deserves credit where credit is due and today she stepped up and did what had to be done.


OBSERVATION: The legislative leadership couldn't keep their members in line to put together the deal with the Governor that she wanted. So it is unlikely she will get anywhere just re-negotiating with them, instead she may have more success if she sits down with Democrats and moderate Republicans and tries to put together a majority that way.