A NH Politics Primer: Understanding Elected Republicans
For those who don’t follow NH politics too closely, I’ve created this helpful chart. For those needing more of an explanation, read onward:
The Main Steet MAGAs. These are generally folks who grew up in GOP households and support Trump, but in a fleeting moment of conscience may realize that the dangerous racist/fascist/authoritarian drek other members of their party are selling these days is a very longggggg way from what Ronald Reagan’s “personal freedom, less regulation, and low taxes” Republican Party once was—but the ones up in Concord try for the most part not to make a fuss as the others de-Americanize America.
The Liberty Caucus. This is the group of local extremists akin to the Freedom Caucus in the US Congress. They are loudly libertarian as long as the liberties and freedoms they’re talking about are restricted to white men (and the women who love them). They hate paying taxes; think public education, public health, and labor unions are the enemy; love carrying deadly weapons of any kind; and truly enjoy smoking unregulated cannabis and quaffing (what they hope are) magic mushrooms. But what about when it’s time to protect the liberties and freedoms of minorities, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ folks, union workers, immigrants, children, or just about anyone else who doesn’t look like them or who disagrees with their brand of billionaire-funded BS? More often than not, we find out that THOSE liberties and freedoms don’t matter a whit to them…
The Freestaters. These are the folks gifted/grifted onto NH by libertarian intellectuals who felt that NH state government would be the easiest state government for libertarians to take over. However, unlike most takeover plans hatched by pointy-headed weirdos, this one actually appears to be working. If you’ve heard of these folks but are fuzzy on who they are, what they are working towards, or what they’ve accomplished in a fairly short period, fmr. NH State Sen. Jeanne Dietsch’s information-packed booklet on them “Who Are the Freestaters?”is a must-read.
The Christian Nationalists. This is the intolerance-masking-as-religion crowd that believes separation of church and state is a sign of the apocalypse. They regularly file—and more than occasionally pass—bills to bring religious activities into public schools, fund religious activities and tuition with taxpayer dollars, and attempt to institutionalize their brand of puritanism over secular citizens and those practicing non-Christian religions or less-toxic versions of Christianity. Tip: If you’ve seen or read “A Handmaid’s Tale” you know how this movie ends.
One of the challenges of trying to get good legislation passed in Concord is trying to identify windows of potential agreement with the majority as constituted above. But on a fairly narrow set of issues, it occasionally can happen. In the last session, these issues sometimes included cannabis legalization, housing, and public safety issues.
But when it comes to erasing the dividing line between church and state, restricting or eliminating a woman’s right to choose; endangering public health; defunding the arts, health care, our public schools; and state services as a whole); further marginalizing already marginalized groups; and making it even harder to vote in the state now ranked as the most difficult state to vote in, I have been—and will always be— a hard “no”.
Why? Because it’s important to me and to the Dems I serve with to keep the state you love from devolving into a land of maple syrup and feudal edge lords.
The question is: how important is it to you?