Sunday’s Monitor had a “My Turn” by Jeanie Forrester, chairwoman of the N.H. Republican State Committee. As a lifelong registered Republican, I take exception to what the Republican Party has become. Some would call me a RINO (i.e., Republican In Name Only). That’s okay by me.
The Republican Party has changed significantly over the past three decades or so, and I find that unacceptable. The party bosses have become much more militant and obstructionist. In their book It’s Even Worse Than it Looks, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein state: “Republicans greeted the new President (Obama) with a unified strategy of opposing, obstructing, discrediting and nullifying every one of his important initiatives.” And “the Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier-ideologically extreme; . . . scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.”
I find the N.H. Republican State Party the same.
Back three or four decades ago, both parties worked together in Washington and compromised to enact legislation that was not perfect but satisfied both parties’ driving philosophies. But since John Boehner and Mitch McConnell promised the National Republican Committee to thwart everything President Obama proposed, this obstructionism has become the modus operandi of the Republican Party. And the state party is bound by the same mind-set.
How many Republicans were invited by the N.H. Republican State Committee to run for a House seat with financial help only if they promised to obey the party bosses?
Then Forrester attempts to castigate our U.S. senators (Democrats) for voting along their party lines. Forrester even invents a childish name (ShaHassan) accusing them of folding to “pressure from Democratic Party bigwigs.”
Forrester is showing a level my party has sunk to that I’m definitely not proud of. Forrester accuses the senators of voting against Republican proposals like the tax law (which has been scored by the Congressional Budget Office as giving 83 percent of tax cuts to the top 10 percent, leaving the bottom 90 percent to split up the remaining 17 percent of tax cuts); Judge Gorsuch for the Supreme Court; and Mike Pompeo (moving from CIA director to secretary of state). Most would call that voting along party lines. Asserting our U.S. senators are obstructionist is the pot calling the kettle black.
Perhaps the N.H. Republican State Committee should really do a careful self-evaluation and resolve to be less obstructionist and more compromising for the benefit of New Hampshire residents of all ages.
(Walter Carlson lives in Concord.)