Patrick Coolican writes in the Las Vegas Sun. He asks the question “Why then has the Republican brand taken such a beating?”
Because to most Americans—and polling bears this out—the war in Iraq, unfettered Wall Street capitalism and cultural fights over gays and abortion seem neither prudent nor reasonable. They seem extreme and foolhardy.
I can buy that. The effort of the Bush-Cheney administration to manipulate the facts to justify the invasion of Iraq was known to bloggers, at least, some year or two, before it began to be discussed on main stream media. The blog that covered that was called the Downing Street Memos. We have now all seen that no regulation of Wall Street capitalism has led to corruption galore. All this haggling over gays and abortion are really silly. I doubt the founding fathers envisioned government’s role as telling people how to live their lives. Those kinds of issues belong in churches not legislative halls. The Republican Party allowed itself to “seem extreme and foolhardy” by getting involved with the conservative religious right wing of the party. Church and state should remain separate entities, as the Constitution states.
Coolican then turns to Nevada.
Consider the budget of Gov. Jim Gibbons. He would have cut state employee and teacher pay 6 percent, while cutting higher education 36 percent. To the mass of suburban voters in places like Henderson who decide elections and who gave Obama a crushing victory in Nevada, this likely does not seem prudent or reasonable.
57 percent to 27 percent favored increasing taxes to maintain teacher salaries instead of cutting salaries 4 percent, Coolican writes, citing a Review-Journal poll.
Coolican explains “…these suburban folks have kids in college, or kids they presume will go to college. They want the option of sending their children to schools in Nevada, and a 36 percent cut in higher education must have seemed absurd to parents of college kids or kids who will eventually get there.”
I don’t know if this has much bearing on the viewpoints of the Nevada GOP or not but it does illustrate how out of touch Governor Gibbons is with the public. My feeling is that Gibbons is sort of wandering about perplexed why he is getting so much criticism because he promised he would not raise taxes when he ran for Governor. However, the culture of Nevada has changed. People want their governmental services and are willing to pay reasonable taxes increases to keep or get them. The old Nevada GOP mantra over taxation doesn’t hold anymore. Gibbons is of the old school. More up to date Republicans see that and, as Coolican points out, “They (the current GOP Nevada legislators) created distance between themselves and Gibbons, who is deeply unpopular and will create problems for all Republicans if he is on the ticket in 2010.”
“…the public does not view Gibbons as prudent or reasonable,” according to Coolican.
I agree with Coolican but would be a bit more pointed. Gibbons has proved himself to be a joke as a Governor. Some Nevada Republicans can see that and recognize they are going to have to modify their stances politically if they expect to remain in elected office in the future.
I believe in a two-party system and the checks and balances that provides. But right now, until we get out of the myriad of messes left by the GOP and can live with the single-party system. But even then an eye has to be kept on the single party so it doesn’t go running off to either extreme.
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