We won’t dwell at length upon the large amount of ridiculous rhetoric contained in Gov. Jim Gibbons’s four-page letter to Chancellor Jim Rogers. (Hat tip to my colleague Jon Ralston for archiving the evidence.) Suffice to say, “no new taxes” pretty much sums up the governor’s point, such as it is.

No, we want to dwell on a line deep in the Gibbons missive, to underscore a point of our own, which is that Nevada really needs a Democratic Party.

Sure, we have a party that calls itself that. But its candidates are occasionally indistinguishable from the members of Gibbons’s own Republican Party on some issues, say, for example, taxes.

Let’s read from the letter to Rogers:

There are clearly people, such as you, who disagree with me about taxes. That is why, when I called the Legislature into special session in June, I gave lawmakers broad authority to propose any solution to our budget shortfall, including increased taxes. It’s fair to assume that, if you had convinced anyone in the legislative leadership that your position was in the best interest of the state, tax raises would have been part of their solution in the special session. They were not. Instead, the Legislature agreed with me that reducing spending was the best way to address the budget shortfall. (emphasis added)

Now, it’s important to keep in mind — as always — that Gibbons is lying. Although he repeatedly said — at the time and since then — that “everything is on the table,” his staff specifically said taxes were not. In fact, he’s repeatedly pledged to veto any tax increase, anywhere, ever. And while he claimed the Legislature agreed with him, it most certainly did not: Several lawmakers, including Speaker Barbara Buckley, gave speeches about how they did not think reducing spending was the way to go.

But Gibbons lies all the time. That’s hardly news. The point here is that he can get away with it, since the Legislature did exactly what he wanted it to, which is cut spending without a peep about raising taxes, or creating a new tax, which is precisely what legislative Democrats should have done. Anybody who is realistic who knows anything about Carson City knows that cutting alone cannot fix Nevada’s problems. Ask a real governor.

Why didn’t they? Some thought Gibbons’s veto was impossible to overcome. Some feared a vote to raise taxes in June would come back to haunt them in November. But for whatever reason, they went along with Gibbons. And he’s used it against them ever since, most recently in his letter to Rogers.

We hope everybody in Nevada understands the Gibbons letter for what it is: A challenge. A dare. An invitation to political and legislative combat. And we hope the Democrats, for a change, rise to that challenge. But here’s the thing: In order to fight the good fight, you must at least fight. If you surrender at the first sign of political trouble, then you’re not really an opposition party, and we might as well all go watch TV while the state goes to hell.