The Republican Party has lost its ability govern. In states and in Washington, the GOP is passing laws hurting the people it’s supposed to serve and preventing government from functioning effectively. They’ve built an unsustainable coalition that relies on exploiting fear and prejudice to pass economic policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy and large corporations. Now, the wheels are coming off of the machine.
In Kansas, Governor Sam Brownback’s massive tax cuts have left his state a wreck with huge revenue shortfalls and anemic growth. In Louisiana, former Republican Governor Bobby Jindal squandered a $1 billion surplus using the same formula. Their free market fanaticism forced underfunded schools to close early in Kansas and left defendants without public defenders in Louisiana.
Here, in North Carolina, Republicans crow about economic growth and a AAA bond rating while the rest of the nation watches with shock and bemusement as the state sanctions discrimination against LGBT citizens. Make no mistake, the protest by companies wasn’t just because of House Bill 2. No, HB2 was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Those companies watched the politicization of the UNC system and the debacle of firing President Tom Ross. They watched election laws designed to make it more difficult for minorities to vote. And they watched legislators bullying and deriding teachers while leaving funding for schools and pay for teachers near the lowest in the nation. While those companies would like to operate in North Carolina, they obviously felt the need to make their voices heard. Unfortunately, the legislature isn’t listening.
In Washington, the Senate made rejecting Obama a governing philosophy. Anything and everything he proposed was dead on arrival, regardless of its merit. The House voted more than 50 times to repeal Obamacare instead of looking for ways to fix it or make it better. Our courts are struggling because the Senate refuses to confirm judges and the Supreme Court is making decisions that lack a majority because of the GOP’s refusal to even consider an Obama nominee.
Now, the Party of Lincoln has nominated a reality TV star for president who built his campaign by belittling and ridiculing people who don’t look or act like him. He’s rejected traditional conservativism in favor of self-promotion. He lies with impunity and insults anyone who dares to challenge him. Instead of rejecting him, most of the GOP is falling in line behind him.
GOP leaders want to blame “leftist mobs” or Obama for all of their woes. But they’ve created this mess themselves. They perverted the conservatism of Reagan to adopt an extreme free market ideology that rejects the role of government and to get it passed, they preyed on the fears and anger of the very people who are left out when their economic policies take effect. Now, that coalition is falling apart.
The party has been taken over by the angry mob. Trump is its personification. Conservatism has been perverted into acceptance and exploitation of discrimination. The party has become largely reactionary and apparently lacks the ability to govern. For the good of our state and our country, it’s time to take the levers of power away from Republicans until they can find their way again.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Interesting suggestions – I was fascinated by the details . Does someone know where my assistant might be able to grab a template IRS 1098-T copy to fill out ?
Lost describes the state of politics in North Carolina. For me, I see the issues in this election as all being intertwined. The failure to expand Medicaid, tax policies that favor the wealthy and corporations, the deliberate attack on our public school system, complicating voter access, etc. All these come under a single heading … justice. My sense of things is that this has become an unjust state, leaving behind a whole class of people in the name of radical right wing ideology. We need to do better.
Norm you just described what has been called the ability to make folks vote against their own best interests.
Politicians have be come skilled con artists. Unlike con artists of old who focus on taking a mark by selling him a phony health machine. ..No, the opportunity to rip off some helpless widow of her life savings -not that lucrative, Floating stock with nothing behind it except blue sky, way to much risk.
The new mark, is the public treasury. It is full of tax payer money, just sitting there for the taking. The risk of getting caught,is less then would be expected. The rewards for their efforts out of the ball park.
For some reason, republican politicians, (with few exceptions), have set up a program to fleece the public treasury,
Dick Chaney has a current net worth somewhere near $90. million. Richard had lucrative roots in the private sector, Halliburton was his cash tree. (Yes, I am envious) The number of opportunities, I had the past. But I sleep nights. I even turned down an apple as a rookie cop.
Dick tried very hard to cover up the extent of his interests by setting up “the old blind trust” The scheme works like this: a politician prior to entering office sets up a trust in the form of a person or corporation who holds and invests the stock in the best interests the stock owner) In this blind trust it was thought Dick put all or a good portion his Halliburton stock)
The word blind comes into play this way: the owner is not to suppose to know how the stock is managed. Therefor, he will not be able to guide the sale or purchase based on the rising or fall of price.
Halliburton is in the oil and related business. What Dick could do legally was to give the ( a fiduciary person or corporation the stock accompanied by instructions as to a purpose. Ie. buy when low and sell when high nothing but Halliburton stock. and the stock of it’s subsidies.
Then Dick, jumps into the office of vice president, the rest is history. Bush did not have a clue what he was doing so he deferred to Dick. What Dick did was set up Halliburton as a major player. Every sale was cool and when the wars were over, Dick left office rolled the stock back to himself and went dancing off to his ranch a multi millionaire.
Unfortunately, this is the face of modern politics.
We are seeing it in this charter school business. One guy, operating through a corporation or limited partnership comes to a group of parents. sell them on the idea of running a charter school. The parents apply for the charter,
This operator (for a small fee) goes out an acquires the land, desks, buildings, supplies and even hires the persons to teach and operate the school. Only a very few of these new hires have to meet NC Teaching standards, ALL of them do not get retirement or health care and paid vacations, forget maturity leave. The game law is the only thing governing these poor folks.
They are paid less then their counter parts in the real state operated schools.
Moreover, they can be fired with out cause at any time.
The local community has no say, how the school is run. The concept of a parent being able to address a school board or petition for change –nonexistent….
Mr. Mills latest foray into political commentary reaches a new low in partisan, idealogical vitriol. It’s belligerent, fanatical attitudes like those of Mr. Mills’ on the left that rival demagogic extremists like those of Beck and Limbaugh on the right that are poisoning the American political debate.
Mr. Mills is now an erstwhile candidate for Congress in a district that leans Republican. It would be enlightening to the district’s voters if his GOP opponent were to quote passages from Mills’ latest diatribe against Republicans in his campaign materials and commercials.
Such projection!
Your observations are right on the money, but your conclusion that the Republican party has been taken over by an “angry mob” only echoes the GOP leaders you criticize for blaming “leftist mobs.” While there is no denying the anger and vitriol (in some cases righteous anger) in every corner of American politics, laying the blame for that state of affairs on the people, elides the role that the wealthy and corporations, especially media companies like FOX, NBC, CNN, and ABC have played in bringing about this state of affairs. That’s where the deeper cause is, and where we should be pinning the blame. Not on citizens.
What you have said is basically true Mr. Mills – and inexcusable, but regretfully the corporate democrats in federal office have played a major role in implementing this republican national agenda, as Christopher has so poignantly pointed out. A case in point is democratic US. Rep. Price’s support for not only the TPP, but the TTIP and the TISA too, which are corporate giveaways that will basically undermine US. government sovereignty in favor of transnational corporate power and profit. Also, Trump initiated his campaign on the premise that all the other GOP contenders were nothing more than establishment politicians intending to continue business as usual – which is exactly what we will get from Hillary Wall Street. Furthermore, Mr. Trump – unlike war-hawk Clinton, is not a proponent of the republican neo-con regime change wars, which are outrageous violations of not only International Law, but the Nuremberg Principles prohibiting military aggression against sovereign states and meddling in the internal affairs of nations. The entire US. political system is rotten to the core and it has been this way for quite some time; this is what should be the greatest issue before us, along with the commandeering of our news media by the very corporations that comprise the military/industrial complex.
“Governing” has nothing to do with it. Government needs to be shrunk until it can be drowned in a bathtub, according to the likes of GOP guru Grover Norquist. No, it’s all about acquiring power and money, period.
Uh, nothing has been perverted.
The heart and soul of Ronald Reagan conservatism IS an extreme free market ideology that rejects the role of government. “Government is not a solution to our problems, government is the problem.”
That ideology was created as a way to block ordinary people from being able to use government to interfere with private sector profiteering. That’s why such a tremendous number of well-off Democrats supported Reagan.
You say that as if the GOP had the ability to govern in the first place. They may have at one time… back when Ike was president, but it’s been a beer truck careening down a hill with no brakes ever since. And it will get worse before it gets better. As insane as it sounds the base will forget about all of this before November whereupon they will march resolutely, tinfoil hats firmly in place, to the polls to vote for the same cadre of clown shoes who put the car in the ditch. Because This Time Will Be Different.
This sums it up well, for me. the Republicans have lost their ability to govern. They are more interested in their party than in the people they are supposed to be serving.
Perfectly described.