It’s not just Nevada that has a gaggle of very bad Republicans in its Legislature. Missouri just witnessed a sellout of philosophical principle that ranks right up there with the 2015 GOP-controlled Nevada Legislature.
On the other hand, California Republicans, surprisingly enough, are the ones setting the good example of what happens when you focus on electing better Republicans instead of just more of them.
California, like Nevada, requires a 2/3 super-majority vote of the Legislature to pass any tax hikes. But unlike Nevada’s majority-party Republicans, the minority-party Republicans in California stuck together and blocked multiple efforts to raise taxes in their just-concluded session.
Shamefully, it was a Republican governor and the Republican-controlled Nevada Legislature that just passed the largest tax hike in our state history, including a gross receipts tax very similar to the one 80% of Nevada voters rejected at the ballot box last November.
It should be noted, however, that California Republicans “pulled a Nevada” back in 2009. Their RINO leaders caved and voted to grow government and increase taxes. Which led to a serious intra-party war that resulted in the party’s legislative leaders being ousted and multiple bitter GOP primaries.
It took a couple of election cycles, but the bad Republicans were eventually culled from the herd and now Republican legislators are all rowing in the same no-new-tax-hikes direction.
Meanwhile, over in Missouri the Republican-controlled Legislature recently passed a right-to-work bill similar to the one Nevada already has. Right-to-work means employees can’t be forced to join a union in order to get a job.
Alas, the state’s Democrat governor vetoed the bill because, well, because the Democrat Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of organized labor. So his veto was really no surprise.
Unfortunately, in the vote to override the governor’s veto – which required a 2/3 super-majority vote rather than a simple majority – Republicans came up 13 votes short thanks to 20 RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) who voted with all but one of the Democrats to kill the bill.
Those 20 Republicans now have political bulls-eyes on their backs and many will draw primary opponents. Hopefully, many of them will lose.
The same can be said for the 21 tax-hiking Republican legislators in Nevada who voted for Gov. Brian Sandoval’s $1.4 billion tax hike. Almost all of them have already drawn credible primary challengers, and four have called it quits rather than face outraged taxpaying voters in 2016.
This is going to be an ugly primary season for Nevada Republicans. But as Clemenza so rightly pointed out in The Godfather, “That’s all right. These things gotta happen every five years or so. Helps to get rid of the bad blood.”
Indeed, a political blood-letting among Nevada Republicans is long overdue. Let the RINO hunt begin!
