Posted on 04/23/2017 7:17:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
Were Democrats the sole cause of our governmental problems, solutions would now be underway. Republicans control all three branches of the federal government. And yet neither Utopia nor common-sense “good government” are on track.
At the state level, Republican dominance has set the country’s all-time high-water mark. The Grand Old Party controls more governorships, 32, than at any time since 1922, nearly a century ago. Furthermore, Republicans enjoy the majority in a whopping 67 state legislative chambers out of 99 total — the most ever for one party. In 32 states, the GOP controls both chambers in the legislature and, in 24 of those states, a Republican also sleeps in the governor’s mansion.
Plus, not counted as a GOP state is Nebraska, where the Republican governor works with a “non-partisan” unicameral legislature peopled mostly by Republicans — though no party label is next to their names on the ballot.
Not that there haven’t been policy victories won by these Republican bodies . . . but it is surprising — and more than a little depressing — how few. And how many times a progressive agenda has triumphed, instead.
Could the Republican Party be part of the problem?
In 2013, when Republicans garnered a legislative majority in my former home state of Arkansas, for the first time since before the century before this century, there was the promise of needed change. But my hope soon turned to horror, as the newly-minted GOP legislature assaulted the state’s term limits law, attacked the ballot initiative process, and saluted Obamacare by expanding Medicaid.
It’s hard to find a much more rock-ribbed conservative Republican state than Idaho. Yet, several key legislative accomplishments in the just completed legislative session were tossed into the garbage by the state’s GOP chief executive.
While the legislature cut the sales tax on groceries to help the people, Gov. Butch Otter swooped in with his veto pen to protect big government’s revenue stream.
One commentator excoriated Otter for giving libertarians “the double bird salute” by vetoing two other bills — one reforming unjust civil asset forfeiture and the other easing pernicious regulation of cosmetology — wondering if the governor had been spoiling “to make libertarians mad.”
That’s not exactly fair, however. Sure, the two blocked bills did appeal to libertarians. But they also appealed to conservatives — and even common-sense liberals. Both passed with bipartisan support.
House Bill 139 would have reduced the number of training hours for a cosmetology license and allowed folks to fix hair at special events like weddings without a government license.
“The fact that many lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, liberals, moderates and conservatives, are working together to advance legislation in the interest of economic opportunity and prosperity,” argued Wayne Hoffman of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, “is a thing of beauty for a profession that’s all about beauty.”
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Those who run cosmetology schools probably like more mandated hours and folks in the profession might wish for less competition. Governor Otter said as much, complaining that HB 139 was written “without input from interested parties or due regard for the health, safety and welfare of the public.”
Just how dangerous is a bad haircut?
Putting safety in context, Hoffman explained that the current mandated hours of training for a cosmetology license “is more than is required to become an EMT in Idaho.”
Gov. Otter also vetoed HB 202, the civil asset forfeiture reform, at the behest of “law enforcement” — the very interested parties who gain from taking people’s stuff without bothering to charge or convict them of a crime. Respect for law and order begins with respect for the law. Permitting government to seize people’s property in such a lawless manner violates two bedrock conservative principles: property rights and the fundamental idea that one is innocent until proven guilty.
You might wonder why the governor can’t simply be overridden. After all, the legislation reforming civil asset forfeiture and the bill easing regulations that block employment in cosmetology both passed by wide margins.
According to the Gem State’s constitution, the governor has ten days after legislation reaches his desk or, at the session’s end, ten days after the legislature adjourns to decide whether to sign or veto a bill. If he vetoes after adjournment, it cannot be overridden — unless the legislature comes back into session.
Only the governor can call legislators back into session, which is exceedingly unlikely if a new session would entail a veto override.
Idaho is one of only six states where legislators can’t override a veto after adjournment. Still, the problem’s simple enough to solve: legislators could propose a constitutional amendment changing the process.
Senator Steve Vick did just that, in 2014 and again in 2016. But though his amendment garnered the two-thirds majority needed in the Senate, the House never took it up. He plans to reintroduce it next year.
Seems to me there’s another constitutional change needed: term limits for the governor. A 2015 poll found a whopping 84 percent of Idahoans favor such limits. Yet, legislators may be squeamish, knowing that those same voters (by that same margin) also want legislators term-limited.
“Sometimes it is amazing,” Idaho Politics Weekly’s Bob Bernick explained, “how elected officials can just ignore the will of voters.”
Seems the political battle lines that matter are between the voters and the big government establishment. And Republicans are too often part of — or seek to dominate — that establishment. Not dethrone it and limit government power.
Republicans and Dems are both part of the Uniparty.
There’s no difference between the two.
Republicans are fake conservatives who sell out America just as much as the Democrats.
Republican embrace of globalism creates socialists for the Democrats. It is a symbiotic relationship.
We gave the GOP has the reigns of power and they have done absolutely NOTHING with it. McConnell is a bad joke and most of the rest of the old guard is the same. DT is doing what he can, but these gutless GOP members don't do squat for us...only what gets them reelected. Free cell phones for deadbeats? Tell me why you would vote that through other than to buy votes.
The GOP has no stones.
The GOP is a “do nothing” party.
Agree the two parties are a “Uniparty”, but why is it when the Dems controlled Congress and WH, they knew what they wanted and went out and got it.
The GOP is afraid of its own shadow.
In Arizona, free-market doctors came up with a plan where a doctor, for four hours a week service in a clinic, would be eligible for a state liability insurance program that would slash their insurance costs by about 90%.
Governor Doug Doucy blocked it due to his hospital $$ support.
The author needs to learn how to write a headline....should be “Winning AT the polls not “in” the polls.
Trump the businessman succeeds because he deals with folks whose word is gold. President Trump unfortunately now has the potential of two swamps to drain. One is the DC swamp he inherited. The other is to recognize the swamp creatures who've found a way into his aquarium. The likes of the Prince and Princess, Ryan, Priebus and more than a few others are clouding President Trump's vision. Pray he cleans the swamp creatures out of his aquarium. If not, he ends up with.....swamp water.
Democrats are winning in one area that nobody seems to notice but is very effective for their cause. The democrats are getting democrats on boards. Not just school boards, but company boards, and hospital boards, and especially charity boards, and university boards. In the name of diversity, boards are all moving left. And the endowments or budgets or what ever the pile of cash used to sustain the boards are going to left winged projects. And of course they are paying nice salaries to the board members as well.
The whole problem with liberalism is they are in search of utopia. There is no such thing and there never, thank God, will be such a thing.
Our system of government is analogous to arbitration. Each person gives up something they want and nobody gets exactly what they want. Although no one is happy with the outcome of arbitration it is a formalized mechanism that keeps the peace between people who see the world so differently they might have grown up on different planets.
The bad aspect is, the politics is never ending and you have to be on constant alert for the other viewpoint putting things into the back pages of legislation that create a constant constituency to vote for their side. TSA was such an animal. Suddenly there is a whole group that owes its pay and benefits to Democrats. The only way to have prevented that would be a solution that didn’t involve creating a new agency and both sides wanted an agency they could control and say, “there. We made everybody safe again.”
Communists, Socialists, Liberals (foreign and domestic)
We need for the NRA to start a political party. If that doesn’t scare the GOP into becoming conservative nothing will.
Wow, a comrade in arms in my war against my favorite bugaboo - one chance in less than twelve words to tell me why I should read your presumably stupid article - 99% of them are stupid - and you blow it.
Read it. Think about it. Ponder it. Does it say something? Does it say anything? Does it convey what I am trying to say? "In the polls" and "at the polls" are two different ideas, and of course I took it the way you did - another idiot set of push polls to legitimize another view.
The rules for headlines probably are an exception to normal rules of grammar, but violate rules of grammar only for effect, and make sure you avoid the logical travesty that is otherwise inevitable.
Yeah we need another third party who wouldn’t have a chance in DC like all the other 99 third parties.
...and your solution would be _________ ??
The Dems would be ramming through legislation like there is no tomorrow by now.
Exactly, the shadow administrative state in its many forms.
They’ve corrupted and bastardized virtually every American institution.
Pretty much.
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