Why wasn't Vince upset about Gilmore's numbers in 2004?

Vince Callahan (former GOP Delegate from Northern Virginia) came out for Mark Warner today (Bearing Drift), for reasons that I find utterly baffling (Washington Post):

Callahan said Gilmore, Warner's GOP opponent, misled legislators and the public about the state's finances and the cost of his signature effort to eliminate the car tax when he was governor from 1998 to 2002.

"The figures Gilmore used were so utterly erroneous and far-fetched that they were mind-boggling," said Callahan, who helped Gilmore push his car tax proposal through the House of
Delegates in the late 1990s.

. . .

Gilmore and legislative leaders agreed to phase out the tax over five years. To make sure the state could afford it, they agreed to suspend the plan if revenue growth fell below 5 percent. In
2001, Chichester and Senate Republicans said the economy had slowed enough that they could not enact the fourth phase of the tax cut. But Callahan sided with Gilmore to keep it on track.

Callahan, who represented McLean from 1968 until this year, said he made a mistake because the Gilmore administration gave him bad information about state finances.

Sounds bad, doesn't it? There's only one problem - Callahan never dropped his support for phase four of the car tax cut - even well after Gilmore and his "bad" numbers had left office.

In fact, in 2004, when the signature achievement of Mark Warner (the tax-hike and cap on car-tax relief) was put before the legislature - Callahan opposed Warner on both (here are the votes). This was a full two years into the Warner Administration, where any supposedly questionable Gilmore numbers were a thing of the past.

This leaves us three alternatives:

1. Callahan is mistaken.
2. Callahan is lying.
3. Gilmore was such a bad governor he managed to go two years into the future and foul up the revenue projections of his hostile successor without anyone getting wise.

I'll take #1.

Either way, this is a helpful reminder of just who fought to get rid of the car tax (Gilmore), and who resurrected it (Warner).

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal