Washington Monthly, via AlterNet:
Our Political Landscape Is a Warzone Thanks to Right-Wing GovernorsTo pay even passing attention to American politics is to notice that contemporary congressional Republicans are as right-wing as they've ever been. The GOP caucuses in both chambers have embraced a hysterical, borderline-nihilist worldview, which is often terrifying in its scope and severity.
In recent years, though, as Republicans in Washington have driven off a right-wing cliff, there have been GOP governors who've been far less ridiculous. At the state level, Republican chief executives have more serious governing responsibilities, and are considerably closer to those who feel the effects of their policies, so it's been fairly common to find occasional examples of GOP sanity in governors' offices nationwide.
That, alas, is changing, too. National Journal's Ron Brownstein explained this week that President Obama "finds himself fighting a two-front war," one in Congress with right-wing lawmakers, and one at the state level with a new breed of right-wing governors.
Republican governors came out swinging against many of Obama's initiatives at the opening bell. Moderates Charlie Crist in Florida and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California supported Obama's 2009 economic-stimulus package, but almost all of their GOP colleagues lobbied congressional Republicans to oppose it. After the stimulus bill passed, several GOP governors (along with a few Democrats) rejected the increased unemployment aid it offered, arguing that the strings attached would force them to increase state spending.
On the same grounds, Republican governors in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin have also renounced federal money to build high-speed rail. Seventeen states -- all but two headed by Republicans -- are suing to block Obama's effort to regulate carbon emissions. GOP governors led the drive to resume offshore drilling after Obama suspended it following last year's BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. From the other direction, the president did his part to heighten tensions by suing Arizona over its immigration law and conspicuously siding with public-employee unions in their struggle with GOP governors (the most notable so far led by Wisconsin's Scott Walker) over collective-bargaining rights.
The mother of all disputes, though, remains over health care. Twenty-seven states—all but two of them boasting Republican governors and all but four GOP attorneys general -- are suing to dismantle the law's foundation: the mandate on individuals to purchase insurance, most with help from government subsidies. The majority of Republican governors are also resisting the law's provisions requiring them to maintain state spending on Medicaid and to establish exchanges where the uninsured can shop for coverage. Put it together and it's fair to say, without drawing any moral equivalence, that health care reform is facing more-extensive resistance from conservative states than any federal initiative since Brown v. Board of Education.
Keep in mind, it's ideology, not practical concerns, that lie at the heart of these governors' reactionary moves. The states turning down investments for high-speed rail, for example, were effectively handed a gift -- jobs, economic development, improved infrastructure -- but Republicans like Rick Scott and Scott Walker turned down the benefits because of a philosophical opposition, deliberately hurting their state in the process. The administration was effectively throwing a life-preserver to a Republican who's drowning, only to be told, "We don't like government life-preservers." .............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/486584/our_political_landscape_is_a_warzone_thanks_to_right-wing_governors/
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