I live in a very liberal town and I know a lot of people who think all Republicans are evil incarnate. And this viewpoint seems to also exist in a significant part of the liberal blogosphere.
I don't see it that way. Example 1 is my mom. She is a Republican legislator in the Hawaii legislature. So what is she fighting for there? Is she trying to increase tax breaks for the rich? Trying to speed up global warming? Trying to invade Tahiti?
Well actually her largest effort is to increase the use of alternative energy and particularly wave energy. That's right, the mean awful Republican is the number on proponent of alternative energy in the Hawaii legislature.
And she's not the only one. There are others across the country who, while they come at problems from a different viewpoint, are trying to solve the same problems and in a way that many liberals, if they stop to look at the results, will find themselves in agreement with.
I put Arnold in that list. Yes he pandered to the right at times - as liberals pander to the left at times (granted, we're the good guys so we should be pandered to). And I didn't agree with a lot of what he did. But he did try to break the stranglehold the public service unions have on the state government. And he did try to move redistricting to a non-partisan body. And you don't see any Democrats stepping up to do this.
And in many cases the competition and compromise between liberal and conservative can lead to laws and policies that are better than those that would have been promulgated by either side on their own.
You also have the corruption that almost always occurs when there is a single party controlling a state. In this case, if the minority party is the Republican party, a vote for a Republican is a vote for a less corrupt government. (I think this is why the Republicans tend to be so good in Hawaii - they aren't even offered any bribes.)
Gaining control of the US House and Senate this Fall is so very critical that I think everyone outside of William Jefferson's district should vote straight Democratic for the US House and Senate. But at the state and local level, especially if the Democratic party owns the state/local level, take a look at the Republican candidates.
Because a knee-jerk vote for a party is not an intelligent thoughtful vote - it's a tribal instinctive vote that separates this country into us and them. And that is not an advancement in civilization, it's a regression.
trackbacks: Mudville Gazette, DailyKOS
