Much will be said and hashed over regarding the federal elections, but there is no doubt that the 2012 elections were a mixed bag at best for New Mexicans of a limited government bent.
The good: All three PRC reform Constitutional Amendments passed;
While more was hoped for, the Legislature did not get markedly worse, despite a tough election nationwide.
The bad: New Mexico voters had a chance to shake up the Legislature and did not do it, thus missing out on a chance to end one of the oldest legislative monopolies in the Western Hemisphere.
Albuquerque voters, throwing basic economics to the wind, adopted an increase in the minimum wage mandated under City law.
In addition to the Legislature, reform-minded judicial candidates were defeated. Apparently, having a terrible judiciary is just fine with a majority of New Mexico voters.
We’ll keep educating New Mexicans on these and other important issues. Because the ideas of limited government are rather counter-intuitive (as John Stossel points out) we are likely to lose more than we win.
What to say? The people voted for burdening the businesses with higher regulated pay, approving the bonds promoting higher property taxes, as well as voting in Ben Ray Lujan (!!!), Cheryl Stapleton (!!!!) Lujan-Grisham (who could only eek out one statement…making sure women had access to birth control)…go figure, and another 4 years of Obamanomics.
As long as we continue to A) allow the media to be biased and promote only one party B) allow our educators to promote their bias & party C) not recruit more young Americans as Republicans, and D) not get a handle on women’s issues…we will be lost for a very, very long time. Time to settle back in with The Road To Serfdom.
I recommend the following post-election commentary: http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/11/post-election-ode-to-billy-joe-and.html
“Two wings of the same bird of prey.” All the superfluous verbiage in Michael Hays’s recommended blog makes me laugh. What a waste of time to read such useless speculation.
I agree, Ted. This pretentious Hays fellow blusters the voice of the Gimmie-Gimmie-Me-First folks. If we want to preserve our country we have to first consider what’s best for America. When that works, all the rest works. Vice-versa is catastrophic (see the state of the union at present).
Ted and Larry, empty trash talk is like efforts at voter suppression; it has the exact opposite effect. The result: a spike in my readers since you posted your comments. I am not alone is wanting the Republican Party to abandon its “Southern strategy” of racism–more generally, what I call “otherism”–ignorance, and lifestyle/culture wars as well as its nineteenth-century laissez faire economic policies; and substitute sensible alternative policies for bizarre alternative universes. Otherwise, such scorn as you have for analyses not to your liking will resemble what I imagine dinosaurs felt for mammals–and even those who believe in a 6000-year-old earth know how that turned out.