Blindsided By The Left In New Hampshire

I thought that it might be just a few of us here in my home town that believed that the voters in New Hampshire were deceived by many of the state's Democrats during the 2006 campaign, with very few of them actually explaining their agenda to the voters. If they had, I believe very few of them would have been elected.

But we weren't the only ones caught off guard by their stealth agenda, and we aren't the only ones who are pissed off by such a deception.

On Thursday Gov. John Lynch signed legislation creating civil unions for same-sex couples and officially recognizing same-sex marriages from out of state as legal unions under state law. It was a dramatic change for which New Hampshire was not ready.

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Such a substantial social change should have been made slowly, with greater deliberation and more citizen participation. But the Democrats in Concord knew that the New Hampshire people were not ready for such a cultural shift, and so they denied the people the opportunity to vote directly on this change. Most even avoided campaigning on it last fall or, as with Gov. Lynch, were less than honest about their position.

Some of those commenting on the editorial above seem to have missed the point about it.

"Government is supposed to protect the weak from the strong, not dictate everyone's behavior. When it does so, it moves backwards, not forwards. Progress is the movement toward greater liberty." Do those words sound familiar? They were the words used by this same editorial page (yesterday, in fact) to describe the house passing the smoking ban. However, the civil union law, which extends rights and increases individual freedom, is met with the same disdain and loathing. This law, however, takes nothing away from anyone. No one is restricted in any way.

It isn't so much what was done. It was how it was done. It wasn't out in the open. It was never brought up during the campaigns last year. It was kept very low key. That is not how you are supposed to deal with an issue that Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, called ”the most important issue of the legislative session.” I'm sorry, but there were far more important issues the legislature needs to deal with, and a measure that affects a very small minority doesn't quite measure up to the education funding crisis our state faces, something that will affect everyone living in New Hampshire. The legislature has a deadline it needs to meet and instead it was futzing around with something that should have been more open and could have waited a little while longer.

This isn't the only issue that the state's Democrats have decided that we're either too stupid or too backwards to make our own decisions about.

They want to ban smoking in all restaurants even though a majority of them are already smoke free. The few that are not are a last refuge for those patrons that may be incapable of kicking the habit – a legal habit – but still want to enjoy the ambience of a restaurant or bar. It may be a shrinking demographic, but they have rights, too. Who are the Democrats to say no?

They also want to roll back some of the restrictions on our state's welfare system. One, by the way, that has been very successful in moving people off of welfare and into the work force with decent paying jobs and is a model that other states have been emulating. These roll backs will not make the system better but will instead move us one or two steps back towards the old system, one that didn't work.

They have expanded state spending by 16% but haven't been able to do that without some legislative sleight-of-hand, raising taxes and fees in places that they thought we wouldn't notice.

Guess what? We noticed. And we don't like it.

Their next target is transfats. Like New York City, the nannyists in the legislature have decided that they have to step in to protect us from ourselves, even though we are more capable then they are when it comes to that. The Dems believe that what's good for New York, a downright ban on transfats of any sort in restaurant food, is good for us...except that history has shown us that what's good for New York is usually bad for us. Again they figure they know better than we do.

I have no doubt that at some point they will find a way to create some kind of financial crisis that can only be solved by some kind of broad-based tax, giving them even more of our hard earned money to waste on programs, laws and other things we neither want or need.

Of course they didn't share their plans during their campaigns. They knew the would have lost the elections if they had told the electorate what the had in mind.

Perhaps on election day in November 2008 we can correct that mistake.