Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter and opinion columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote this absolutely fantastic closing sentence in her column this week…
“It’s good to win, but winning without a declared governing purpose is a ticket to nowhere.”
Noonan was writing about Republicans in Congress whose electoral strategy is “don’t rock the boat, don’t mess things up with anything controversial.”
But she could just as easily have been talking about Republicans in the Nevada Legislature, especially Senate Minority Leader Moderate Mike Roberson and his two hand-picked stand-for-nothing candidates in the swing races of Senate Districts 8 and 9.
Seriously. Other than, “If you elect us to the majority, we’re going to tax the tar out of mining and dump it into education,” what does Roberson and his GOP brethren stand for? What’s their platform? And why would it be better for Roberson and the Republicans to raise our taxes and increase spending than the Democrats doing the exact same thing?
Thanks to the Gibbons Tax Restraint Law, Republicans in both the Senate and the Assembly had enough seats in both 2011 and 2013 to block the extension of 2009’s “temporary” tax hikes that were supposed to “sunset” in 2011. If they wouldn’t use their power then to do the right, fiscally conservative thing, why in the world would anyone believe they’d do anything differently if they had the majority?
All these GOP leaders care about is getting elected and being a legislator. They have no core philosophical convictions and sure as hell have no backbones. They regularly stand for nothing and fall for anything. They have no declared governing purpose and, worse, refuse to debate their opponents or subject their campaigns to serious media scrutiny.
Roberson – and his counterpart, Assembly Minority Leader Pat Hickey – don’t deserve to be in the majority. Majorities have to lead. And Roberson and Hickey have proven the only place they’d lead us is to Liberal Lite.
Thanks, but no thanks.
