* Welcome to the Grand Delusion.
* Attended Tuesday’s Nevada Republican Club luncheon. Incoming Senate Minority Leader Heidi Gansert (R-Reno) and Assembly Minority Leader P.K. O’Neill (R-Carson City) were the featured speakers.
* During the Q&A session, someone – and no, I did not “plant” the question – asked O’Neill about his vote in 2015 for the largest tax hike in Nevada history.
* To his credit, this was the first time I’ve heard O’Neill apologize for voting for that massive tax hike.
* On the other hand, his reason – that he thought the additional money would go into our failed public schools, including the boondoggle known as “class-size reduction,” and didn’t –
perpetuates my belief that he still doesn’t get it.
* I’ll accept the apology. But I’m still concerned that he thought it was OK to give the education establishment – especially the teachers unions - more dough without giving parents more school choice, especially vouchers to help cover the cost of attending a private school.
* Plus, he still refuses to put some teeth in his born-again fiscal conservatism by signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. If he’s really sorry and won’t do it again, why won’t he put that commitment to us in writing?
* Both legislative leaders talked a good game, and I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt in how they’ll do in the upcoming session under a Republican governor. But I still think both are stuck on the idea that they’re in the “minority” party and not the “opposition”
party.
* Both seem resigned that there’s “noting we can do” since they’re in the minority – and in the case of the Assembly, the super-minority. But that’s only if they CHOOSE to be doormats.
* You’ll be hard-pressed to find a bigger super-minority than the 20 House conservatives in Congress who refused to support Kevin McCarthy for Speaker without SERIOUS concessions from the 200+ McCarthyites.
* They got what they wanted because they FOUGHT for it. They didn’t just roll over and take some table scraps like Republicans usually do. They played hardball. And they won.
* Every legislative session, bills the Democrats want come up that require a 2/3 super-majority to pass, including tax hikes. And they don’t have it in the Senate.
* So BEFORE the session starts, Republicans need to decide what their hill(s) to die on is…and if the Dems don’t give it to them, dig their heels in and refuse to vote, as a bloc, for any and all 2/3 bills.
* That’s called “leverage.”
* What could be hills to die on?
* Reinstating Education Savings Accounts. Changing mail-in balloting back from opt-out to opt-in. Making ballot harvesting illegal again. Photo ID. Eliminating the governor’s power to declare an open-ended state of emergency without legislative approval. Requiring that all bills be posted publicly online for 72 hours before voting on them.
* Those are just a few off the top of my head. Pick one. Or two. Or three. And dig your heels in. If the 20 conservative “rebels” in the House could do it, so can we.
* Liberal blubber-blogger Jon Ralston is a very dependable weather vane; if he hates a certain elected official, it’s almost certain that elected official is a conservative. So who’s on his “hit”
list for the 2023 legislative session?
* In a recent blog post, Jonny Jihad went after freshman State Sen. Jeff Stone and freshman Assemblywoman Danielle Gallant…
“Jeff Stone was billed to Nevadan (sic) Republicans as a future leader for Senate Republicans. … However, it seems that since arriving in Nevada, he has been hanging out with…Danielle Gallant, and has been upsetting people with his right-wing views. … I expect he will be irrelevant…”
* When Ralston declares you “irrelevant,” that’s proof in itself that you’re VERY relevant.
* The establishment of a Nevada-based version of the Freedom Caucus in Congress was announced less than a year ago, including the hiring of a full-time executive director.
* Alas, following the disastrous election results for Assembly Republicans last November - putting them back into a super-minority - the national organization has pulled both it’s
imprimatur and its funding for Nevada.
* The silver lining? Concerns about O’Neill aside, his lieutenants– Jill Dickman, Danielle Gallant and Rich DeLong – all appear to have the conservative stuff Freedom Caucus members are made of. Dickman and DeLong are both Tax Pledge signers.
* It’s one thing that the Nevada GOP dropped the ball “bigly” in turning out Republicans in November’s elections – 155,000 active Republican voters stayed home and did not vote. But what has Chairman McDonald done about it?
* Step #1 *should* have been to get on the phone and start calling all those Republicans who didn’t vote in 2022 and ask them “why?” It’s the only way to KNOW, not assume, why they sat this one out.
* And once you know why GOP voters didn’t vote, THEN you can make appropriate changes to assure it doesn’t happen again in ’24.
* And while the party’s at it, it should also be calling non-partisan voters and survey if they voted GOP and, if not, why not. That’s called basic “market research”– apparently a foreign concept for Chairman McDonald.
* Alan Bigelow – who ran unsuccessfully for Las Vegas City Council last year – has announced he’s running for the State Assembly District 5 in Clark County in 2024.
* As of the end of 2022, there are 3,571 more Democrats than Republicans in this district…but there are 14,285 non-partisan voters. The GOP candidate in that district last year lost by 1,678 votes out of almost 23,000 cast.
* Paraphrasing the Ragin’ Cajun, James Carville: “It’s the independents, stupid.”
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“President Joe Biden's taxpayer-funded wall for his Delaware vacation home is getting built while he continues to voice his staunch opposition to building a wall at the southern U.S. border.” – FOX News
“The Pentagon has ended its COVID vaccine mandate for the U.S. Military after Kevin McCarthy demanded that it be pulled out of the National Defense Authorization Act that was approved last month.” – Ryan Saavedra, Daily Wire
“Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders bans 'Latinx' from Arkansas government documents.” – FOX News
“The air of inevitability around another term for (RNC Chairwoman Ronna) McDaniel
has been punctured by a series of votes against her in four states.” -NBC News
Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views and
blogs at MuthsTruths.com. His views are his own.