U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee (RINO, RI) has promised to remain a Republican, offering the supremely confidence-inspiring declaration: “Yes, at this stage, that is my intention.” In a sad echo of President Bush’s overused phrase in the first debate, Chafee says it is also his intention to “work hard to regain the support” of Republicans. Personally, I think the state GOP chairwoman’s defense of Chafee tells Republican voters all they need to know:
“The media forced him to make statements that were contrary to how he actually views his role,” Morgan said, speaking of Chafee’s months of inconclusive public musings about whether he would support Mr. Bush and remain a member of the Republican Party.
“You guys backed him into a corner,” Morgan said, “and he wasn’t adept enough at dealing with the media to sidestep the issue.”
Perhaps it’s best that he not “rehabilitate that,” as Morgan put it.
[Open full post]A pre-election comment from the Edward Achorn piece linked in the previous post is worth a follow up:
Now, Mayor Laffey and GOP candidate Jim Davey are working to send another powerful statewide message. They hope to defeat state Rep. Frank A. Montanaro (D.-Cranston) — Boss Montanaro’s son — on Nov. 2.
A quick look at the election results for the City of Cranston reveals that the hope was fulfilled. Not only did Mayor Laffey win his own race in a landslide, but Jim Davey added his R. to the General Assembly. The Democrats will work to firm up their seats around the rest of the state, lest Laffeyism spread, but they may be backing across a narrow beam. Note this all-too-revealing inside explanation of Montanaro’s defeat:
“They didn’t defeat Frank junior. They defeated Frank senior,” Cranston Democratic City Chairman Michael J. Sepe said yesterday. “They weren’t running against Representative Montanaro but they were running against the AFL-CIO president Frank Montanaro.”
Exactly. And that’s hardly an unfair strategy. The single greatest problem that Rhode Island has is the degree to which the various aspects of its governing class work together against the interests of the citizens. The more they link arms, the larger target they may present.
[Open full post]Writing in the Providence Journal, Emily Harding of the Rhode Island Association of Health Underwriters lays out the general argument for some suggestions for improving the healthcare near-crisis in the state:
What made [national health insurance carriers] leave the state had nothing to do with the inability to compete with Blue Cross (which they had done for so many years, or else they wouldn’t have stayed as long as they did), but it had everything to do with Rhode Island’s unfriendly legislative atmosphere, which got worse and worse until it was so bad that they all left.
National carriers have been on record for two years saying what changes are needed if Rhode Island wants to see competition return to its health-insurance market.
The suggestions seem reasonable, and just pushing those who run Rhode Island to do something about the problem — other than reaching out for more centralized control — is absolutely critical. But here’s the catch:
Can we count on our legislature to get the job done next session, so we might see some additional carriers back in Rhode Island, perhaps by next summer, along with much lower health-care costs and more choices? It remains to be seen whether our legislators will get the job done.
Well, that’s the question of the decade. Interested citizens might find themselves wondering why it is so difficult in this state to make straightforward changes to address obvious problems. For starters, consider this little biographical summary from a recent Edward Achorn piece:
In many ways, Representative [Frank A. Montanaro (D.-Cranston)], 43, is the poster child of special-interest control of the General Assembly. It is their money — especially the money of public-employee union groups allied to his father, who is head of the state AFL-CIO and State Association of Fire Firefighters — that put young Frank in office at 25 and has kept him there for 18 years.
Soon after his election, he obtained his state job, as assistant director of facilities at Rhode Island College, which pays him about $53,600 a year. Combined with his state representative’s salary, he makes $65,880 a year directly from the taxpayers. …
Immense political power seems to be concentrated in Montanaro’s family. His father, of course, is the unelected governor, running Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, controlling the state Labor Relations Board and often chairing the state Economic Development Corporation. Young Frank’s wife, Joy, a dental hygienist, is chair of the Cranston Zoning Board of Review. His uncle, Richard Crudele, ran the city’s Building and Maintenance Department until Mayor Laffey took over. His cousin, former state Rep. Coleen Crudele, is chairman of Cranston’s Board of Contracts and Purchasing.
How many Rhode Island legislators have similar reason to be disinclined to invite competition into the state? Higher healthcare costs to the RI taxpayer are a meager price to pay, considering the rewards of complicity.
[Open full post]John Fund documented in yesterday’s Opinionjournal, that more and more states are tending towards one-party rule at the state level.
This is an intersting trend. If you believe what people say about voting for “the best candidate” instead of party affiliation, you would expect, at the local level, less dominance by any single party, because at the local level, voters have more of a chance to actually get to know their candidates.
It’s entirely possible that my media-cynicism adjuster is tuned too high, but whether rightly or wrongly, the following caption for the photo currently on the Providence Journal‘s home page surprised me. In big, bold letters on the picture itself is the word “Captured,” and beneath it:
In this image from television, troops oversee captives at a hospital on the western edge of Fallujah, the Sunni insurgent stronghold being stormed by international and Iraqi forces today.
I’m glad to see the international community joining us over there in Iraq! The linked headline that follows is “Thousands of U.S. Troops Storm Fallujah,” but that might be the Associated Press’s handiwork.
I’m also glad to see the Iraqis getting into gear. Here’s Prime Minister Ayad Allawi sending his troops off to battle:
“The people of Fallujah have been taken hostage … and you need to free them from their grip,” he told Iraqi soldiers who swarmed around him during a visit to the main U.S. base outside Fallujah just before the attack began.
“May they go to hell!” the soldiers shouted, and Allawi replied: “To hell they will go.”
Well, wherever the insurgents end up, may God watch over the troops fighting to wrench the city from them.
ADDENDUM:
Mere minutes after I’d posted this entry, I noticed that the AP headline has been changed to “Troops Storm Fallujah in Major Assault.” The tone is changing more quickly than I’d thought, even with my media-cynicism adjuster set to eleven!
I’d been considering republishing a June entry from my own blog here, mostly so that it would be in the archives for future reference, and Marc’s latest post makes the topic more relevant. It’s my “coverage” (including video) of the RIGOP convention. Even if the reality of last week’s election has thrust the GOP revolution back into political context, I’m still hopeful that some retooling within the state’s Republican party gives indication that things can and will change.
The format of the post is an experiment that I hope to pursue more regularly in the future (assuming I manage to maintain the time without going into bankruptcy or having to sell my video camera). I’ll admit that this initial “v-blog” isn’t very good. It took a good 10 minutes of listening to the protesters outside for me to realize, “Hey, this is what I carry around this video camera for.” Furthermore, not having any defined purpose for filming, I didn’t brave the sidewalk in their midst and I didn’t give much thought to positioning, camera steadiness, and the like. Since I’d previously been remiss in my following of RI politics, I also didn’t react quickly enough to catch most of the significant moments. Although, I did catch the defining moment: Mayor Laffey declaring “out with the old, in with the new.”
As I suggested in the context of Edward Achorn’s belief that Rhode Islanders’ displeasure will, at some point, break through their political apathy, the motion might already be forming within the state’s GOP. Voters need someone else for whom to vote, after all, before they can overthrow inadequate leadership.
For that reason, it is only more fitting that remembrance of Ronald Reagan permeated the RIGOP convention on Thursday — from Chairwoman Patricia Morgan’s misspoken request for “ayes” from all who wished to endorse President Reagan’s bid for a second term to Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey’s likening of his view of the RIGOP’s prospects to Reagan’s optimism about the fall of the Soviet Union. (Both of which seem laughably improbable as predictions.)
For some idea of just how mired this state is in its political system, consider that I had no idea that the speeches related to internal controversy were of any more significance than what might be found in a high school student senate until the highest high point of the evening. Even then, I didn’t get a sense of the magnitude of the shift until I read Scott MacKay’s explanation in the Providence Journal.
Video: Scott MacKay (3sec). Windows Media
According to MacKay:
In what some Republicans saw as his first foray into making a run for statewide office, Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey spearheaded a move at the Republican State Convention last night to depose Michael Traficante, the former Cranston mayor and longtime Republican stalwart, from a top party post.
Traficante was set to run for reelection as national committeeman, a position that carries an automatic seat to the Republican National Convention, when people close to Laffey at City Hall discovered that Traficante had disaffiliated from the Republican Party.
Mayor Laffey has raised eyebrows across the state by cracking down on precisely the sort of degeneration in his town that infects the entire state and much of the country — taking on everything from “political patronage” crossing guards and gas pump inspectors to ACLU attacks on Christmas displays. Not surprisingly, the mayor — the only key figure who, despite being the most bustling politician in the room, offered a lurking blogger so much as a quick “hello” — with his somewhat wild eyes and candid language, looks to be the focal point for the incipient revolution. From MacKay:
“Out with the old, in with the new,” said Laffey in a campaign speech supporting Robert Manning, a 51-year-old retired banker from Charlestown, who was installed in Traficante’s place.
Video: Stephen Laffey (28.6sec). Windows Media
A former head of Citigroup Japan, Manning reminded the crowd that the Rhode Island Republicans are the 15 in the 85/15 split — and for a reason. Now the beneficiary of an upstart movement, he enters the scene as a representative of change.
Another such representative is Dave Rogers, who is running a second time against Patrick Kennedy for my district’s seat in the U.S. Congress. As I believe is appropriate for a national candidate, Rogers’s persona is less incendiary, and in his speech, he made a point of his intention not to settle into a political position (approximately): “Patrick Kennedy says he’s never worked a day in his life. This won’t be my first job, and it won’t be my last.”
I’ve implied before that Rogers is running against images and stereotypes that Rhode Islanders’ believe about themselves and about conservatives. So, it is fitting that he’s more approachable and less forward than Laffey and is inclined to make self-effacing jokes about the arrogance of having had to nominate himself the first time he ran. (This is by no means the best part of his speech, but for the below-mentioned reasons, I didn’t film the rest.)
Video: Dave Rogers (18.5sec). Windows Media
All considered, and admitting that I am a political naif, I couldn’t help but see, in the burgeoning movement within the RIGOP, reason for more hope for my state than I’ve yet been able to muster. I also couldn’t help but notice the irony of different groups’ relative roles. While, inside the Cranston Knights of Columbus building, a quiet revolution was beginning, with the intention of returning a balanced political system and sensible government to Rhode Island, outside, the activists marching on the street, drawing honks from passing cars, were protesting for bigger government and expanded benefits for a limited few.
Video: Protesters (30.1sec). Windows Media
As MacKay touches on, the marchers were private child-care providers who are trying to be defined as public employees in order to gain some of the benefits that come with that status in this state. In Spanish and English they exploited children and chanted ill-fitting clichés; “No justice, no peace” translated into the circumstances meant “no free healthcare, no peace.”
If the rumble within the political party that is euphemistically called the “minority” in the state of Rhode Island continues to grow, perhaps we’ll end up with justice, peace, and prosperity to boot.
Turning to local politics, it seems that one of the first things to be done is to concisely show the size of the task we conservatives/Republicans face. With the latest election in the rear view mirror, the following numbers should clarify our perspective (taken from this story):
Republican State Representatives – 12 out of 75
Republican State Senators – 6 out of 38
Granted, the governor is a Republican, and two out of the state’s largest cities are run by Republican Mayors (Cranston’s Steve Laffey and Warwick’s Scott Avedesian), but the Republican “bench” is pretty thin. Dave Rogers has now failed two times in his attempt to unseat Patrick Kennedy and will have to turn to a different means to gain political legitimacy within Rhode Island. Another run would, at this point, render him bereft of all political capital.
WPRO’s Dan Yorke has commented that, individually, teachers are great people, but that collectively, when gathered beneath the union umbrella, they can be unreasonable, greedy and quite shrill. I would add that we have the same problem with our legislative representatives and senators. In a small state like Rhode Island, where everybody really does know almost everybody else, these local politicians are well-known, and well-liked, neighbors and friends. They are, generally speaking, good people. The problem is that when they gather together on the Hill, they enter the partisan echo chamber and, inevitably, these good people do bad things in pursuit of patronage and personal advancement. This is a direct result of the lack of political competition in the state.
I suppose many have concluded that the Republican party in Rhode Island is simply too inept, at this point, to be of any practical political value. That may be so, but for those of us who still believe that the Republican party is the last, best vehicle through which real change can be realized in this state, it is up to us to contribute and participate in a Rhode Island Republican Renaissance. Right now it seems like a dream. It will take hard work to turn that dream into reality.
It has become a commonplace among right-leaning pundits that Democrats’ greatest problem is their reluctance to objectively assess the causes of their defeat and, more importantly, to reconsider their positions accordingly. Of course, that the observation is commonplace doesn’t make it untrue. Here’s Matt Russo, from Exeter, in a letter to the Providence Journal:
The call now is for unification. My own candidate said we must unite. I disagree.
I will never be as foolish as to accept the leadership of this president. He does not represent me. Everyone in the media talks as if family values and a moral lifestyle are distinctly Republican. The Northeast is being mocked at as some sort of lost culture.
I protest that notion as adamantly as I possibly can. I come from a Catholic background and I can trace my roots directly back to the founder of my state, Roger Williams. My morals and values, in my opinion, run as deep as my ancestral heritage. …
It is time for the Democrats to understand their failures. It is not time to bow down to the leadership of a wayward president. The time now is for Democrats to right their own course. The time is now to stand up, get off the mat, and begin to fight back.
Catholic blogger Mark Shea has found the perfect cartoon to illustrate how those on the other side of the aisle feel about this Democrat impulse.
[Open full post]Now for my first self-promotional plug. My most recent post at my personal blog, The Ocean State Blogger, deals with Blue New England’s place in a Red Nation and in it I allude to the Republican party being the real “big tent” party in the nation. Additionally, I recently posted on some of the Rhode Island exit polling results that seem to indicate that many Rhode Islanders are more personally conservative than they vote. Read them both for why I made these two conclusions. I promise in the future to limit my cross-posting, but I believe these two posts are particularly relevant to the (as yet unknown) readership of this site.
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