It’s coming up on a couple of years since I gave a presentation on Rhode Island’s pension reform and its implications to a room of conservative/libertarian journalists.  I opened with a clip from Gina Raimondo’s speech when accepting a Manhattan Institute award related to the pension reform (which has helped mislead a lot of folks into believing that she’s in some way a right-winger).

During that speech, she told an anecdote that struck me as — to be blunt — utterly terrifying, in an existential, Good versus Evil kind of way.

Saint Gina, as some have called her, was in church one Sunday, and a person in the pew behind her tapped her shoulder.  “Thank you,” he or she said (in Raimondo’s exact words).  “I want you to know that I believe again… I believe again in government.”

I can’t think of a better metaphor for the Progressive project’s ideal than an abortion-supporting Democrat politician’s being approached by a Christian before Catholic Mass and lauded for restoring a church-goer’s faith… in government.  Well, now, here we go with that politician’s announcement for governor:

Raimondo laid out what she called “a bold progressive agenda designed to jump start Rhode Island’s economy.”

Conservatives and libertarians will agree (as should everybody else) that the four items on Raimondo’s initial list would actually be detrimental to both freedom and economic growth.  Some might try to rationalize it in the name of pandering to the progs for the sake of a primary, but I’d reissue my warning that it is more likely that these are just the farthest left of Raimondo’s intentions that she thinks she can state publicly… for now.