I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
On Thursday, March 5, the editorial pages of both The Santa Fe New Mexican and The Albuquerque Journal were echoing the same tired old talking points that have become a mantra among progressive pundits everywhere.
First, that Rush Limbaugh is the de facto head of the Republican Party, and second, that Republicans have no concrete ideas of their own and do nothing but snipe petulantly at President Obama’s policies.
The New Mexican’s editorial, “Republican meltdown hurts party, nation,” dutifully repeated both talking points. As I addressed the flap between Limbaugh and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on my blog last week , I will focus here on the second and more important talking point. As the New Mexican’s editorial writer scornfully put it:
… the congressional end of the party threw hissy fits over President Barack Obama’s stimulus package, resembling nothing so much as a toddler screaming “no” repeatedly with no other solutions in mind. To every problem, they shouted “tax cuts,” with only the Republican governors willing to sit down and discuss the thorny economic problems like grown-ups.
As a mother who has survived the blighted wilderness of toddlerhood several times, I can tell you, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, U.S. Rep. John Boehner and RNC Chairman Michael Steele aren’t even coming close to toddleresque fits.
Preston Brooks braining Charles Sumner with a cane on the Senate floor in 1856 is a hissy fit worthy of a toddler (though Brooks was a Democrat and Sumner a Republican) but so far McConnell hasn’t taken a cane to Harry Reid, or even kicked him in the shins.
On the same day the New Mexican was mocking Republicans as bratty two-year-olds, The Albuquerque Journal editorial page featured a column by The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson that dismissed the Republican response to Obama’s policies as “sputtering about rampant socialism” on the part of the “Rush Limbaugh wing of the party” and mocked Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s response to the president’s congressional address as
… a program that would have sounded bold and innovative if the year were 1978: lower taxes, smaller government, wave the flag, etc.
Patriotism? How totally ’70s. Limited government? How utterly passé. But this shouldn’t surprise us, because after all, what can you expect from people who nominated a presidential candidate with such totally uncool taste in music?
Ironically, on the page facing Robinson’s piece was a column by Jim Scarantino examining the policies of state Land Commissioner Pat Lyons, the only Republican who currently holds statewide office in New Mexico. According to Scarantino, Lyons:
… has earned record revenues from an increasingly diversified portfolio of economic activities. From $263 million in 2003, revenues have more than doubled to $546 million in 2008.
That’s a lot more money for schools, hospitals, law enforcement, highways and many other state programs that many would prefer not to see cut, courtesy of good old ingenuity.
You know, that utterly passé, totally ’70s policy of toddleresque hissy fits.
Good Lord, if only we could get Mr. Lyons to stop throwing hissy fits and making so darned much money, then democracy in New Mexico would be safe from the depredations of Rush Limbaugh’s slack-jawed minions.
But there’s more. If it weren’t bad enough that Pat Lyons is making more money for the Democratic Legislature and Gov. Bill Richardson to spend, he’s also had the bad taste to spend less of that money in his own department.
According to Scarantino:
No appointee in [Lyons'] office makes a six-figure salary. From the standpoint of a taxpayer, it gets even better. According to his spokeswoman (she makes $32,000 less than her Governor’s Office counterpart), Lyons has returned to state coffers about $5.8 million in budgeted money he did not spend. He also has reduced the payroll from 157 to 155. Richardson, on the other hand, has added about 5,700 new employees during his tenure.
Moreover,
At the start of [Richardson's] first term, only eight executive branch appointees were paid more than $100,000. That number has soared to 110.
Instead of obediently parroting the talking points Rahm Emanuel and the DNC send them, perhaps journalists, columnists, and yes, even Democratic politicians themselves might do better to take a look at the actual performance of Republican elected officials and compare that to the performance of their Democratic counterparts.
Instead of mocking Bobby Jindal’s speech as “cringe-worthy,” perhaps Eugene Robinson should take a look at Jindal’s accomplishments as governor.
Instead of mocking Republicans as infantile for saying “no” to runaway government spending, perhaps they should take a look at Republicans like Pat Lyons here in New Mexico and possibly learn a few lessons about both politics and economics.
