Democracy in Peril

By Steve Sebelius

CONTRACT HIT: Given all the jokes made about the Republicans' 1994 campaign vehicle--the Contract "on" America--it's curious that Nevada Republicans decided to pilfer the idea, with Assembly Minority Leader Lynn Hettrick in the Newt Gingrich role.

Hettrick is, unlike Gingrich, actually a nice person.

Reading the contract, however, you'd be excused for feeling a wave of complacency that threatens to send you into alpha-wave sleep for a day.

No new taxes. A cap on property taxes. Making water a priority. Education performance audit. Limit government growth. Tort reforms. You search in vain for ideas that are new, or revolutionary, or not already enacted into law.

The Review-Journal predictably praised the idea, on the no-so-outrageous grounds that at least you'll know what you're getting if you sign up with the Republicans in the Assembly. (Certain other Republicans, not so easy to identify by label, won't ever have the opportunity to sign the contract. Take that, Ray Rawson.)

Other members of the GOP, such as true-believer Chuck Muth, blasted the contract from afar, saying it falls short in stridency and "is nothing but fine print."

Democrats say it's a desperate scheme by desperate Republicans who are desperate to gain control of a Democrat-dominated lower house.

The truth can probably be summed in a single word: Whatever.

As in, whatever happened to the notion that taxes are not necessarily a bad thing, in that they provide for the general welfare in the form of roads, parks, police officers, firefighters, schools, hospitals, jails, courts and a thousand other things we use every day? When you look at it that way, a pledge to cap taxes is a pledge to stop providing some of the above, or at least cut back on how much you provide. Does the public support that?

Or whatever happened to the notion that you don't make housing more affordable by restricting the access of people to attorneys who fight against shoddy home building? You make housing more affordable by ensuring houses are built right in the first place.

And whatever happened to the notion that you don't make health care more affordable by restricting access of injured patients to attorneys to recover damages on their behalf? You make health care more affordable by ensuring people have access to insurance, good doctors, inexpensive drugs and preventive care.

Why does it seem that Republicans always seem to come down against empowerment? They rail against spending money on schools, which can provide the education to gain a foothold in the job world. They rail against lawyers, who are often the only people who can equalize a system heavily tilted in favor of the powerful. They oppose universal health care, a minimum wage, the right to unionize and, occasionally, public access to public spaces for free speech purposes.

It's true that the GOP argues some of these very things decrease opportunity, hurt the poor and are ineffective. But in case after case, despite flowery rhetoric, the Republicans seem to be the party of the powerful.

As for the contract, well, whatever.