Why Principle Matters

By Steve Lonegan

Since the Primary Election, loyal Republicans have been baffled by the behavior of the GOP establishment in New Jersey. First, operatives in the campaign of our nominee for Governor, Chris Christie, monkeyed around with the social issues page on his website, gaining the attention of the media before resolving what they caused.

Then, at the meeting of the Republican State Committee – the men and women elected from each county to formulate and advance the party’s principles – the party leadership blocked a move to formally adopt the platform of the national Republican Party, as well as blocking a resolution condemning Governor Corzine’s tax hikes. At least one major newspaper, the Star-Ledger, linked the leadership’s refusal to adopt our Party’s platform to the fact it contains Pro-Life and Pro-Traditional Marriage planks.

The impact of not adopting the platform – a set of principles to guide the party and its elected officials – would soon manifest itself. Just days later, Tom Keen Jr., the Republican leader in the New Jersey State Senate, led a small group of Republicans in voting with liberal Democrats in support of the life-time confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Barry Albin to the state’s highest court.

Albin has been the state’s most liberal activist judge, authoring the radical Lewis vs. Harris decision in support of civil unions—a decision that drastically alters the meaning of marriage and changes the course of our culture without voter input. Albin is the architect of the left wing social engineering scheme known as COAH and the failed Abbott education funding mandates that have given New Jersey the highest property taxes in America. The action of these Republicans was a slap in the face to their own nominee for Governor, who has promised to appoint “conservative judges who will uphold the Constitution”.

That same day, Senate Republican Leader Kean and his allies would rise alongside Jon Corzine to support another liberal scheme – the bonding of $400 million for “open space”. No one opposes open space, but at a time when the state’s debt has reached crushing levels more debt simply isn’t rational. Lacking any platform, Republicans like Senator Kean have left themselves increasingly vulnerable to emotional, feel-good appeals.

Meanwhile, over at the Assembly, Republican Leader Alex DeCroce lobbied to pass a destructive COAH bill. This legislation gives central planners in Trenton the power to override local mayors and councils and planning boards, forcing them to convert projects approved as “over-aged-55 housing” to open housing as long as there is a 20% low income housing component. This bill shifts power to Trenton bureaucrats and developers’ lobbyists. Republicans should be united behind defending home rule, but instead, without a guiding set of principles, they are lost.

But just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, along comes the vote on the largest tax increase in America’s history -- Barack Obama’s “Cap & Trade” scheme.

Only ten days after the failure of the New Jersey Republican State Committee to adopt the platform of the Republican Party, this tragic bill passed the House of Representatives by a narrow 219 to 212, with eight Republicans joining 211 Democrats. Our state had the dubious distinction of seeing three of those prosperity destroying votes cast by New Jersey Republican Congressmen Leonard Lance, Frank LoBiondo, and Chris Smith. No other state in America saw so many Republicans vote with President Obama and the Democrats. In New Jersey, three of our five Republican congressmen did.

To make matters worse, the Atlantic County Republican Committee sent out a release attacking those Republicans in Congress who stood up for taxpayers and came close to stopping President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and their destructive legislation. But it should come as no surprise that in a state where Republican leaders refuse to adopt Republican principles there is no semblance of principled leadership.

The question that haunts many of us is, “Why?”

To understand how we got here, we need to look at who controls the levers of power within the GOP establishment in New Jersey. For the most part, it’s not the elected officials. In New Jersey, most elected officials are part-timers. You must look behind the Republican “leader” – to the permanent bureaucracy who runs our legislative caucuses.

The players in this bureaucracy slide through a revolving door that takes them from legislative staffer, to lobbyist, to holder of government contracts or appointments, and then back in time to secure a fat taxpayer-funded pension. These are the hollow men who are there when a freshmen legislator arrives in Trenton – and remain twenty years after he’s gone.

Only our party – the Republican Party – can bring change to Trenton. The Democrats cannot bring the fiscal responsibility New Jersey needs. They are captive of their own base vote – of public employee unions and those dependent on government. They dare not risk their contract with these constituencies.

Republicans have a base vote who wants fiscal change. It is the hollow men who reject it, and they do so for the simple reason that it is in their financial interests to maintain the status quo. At the back of every seemingly inexplicable betrayal by a GOP “leader” sits a close personal advisor with his own personal reasons. And in a state GOP without principles – that fails to adopt its own party platform – this kind of venal corruption is rampant.

That’s why it is so important for the New Jersey Republican State Committee to take a principled stand, adopt the party platform, and then use those principles when the hollow men come round with their personal agendas.
Letters from State Committee officials Rob Eichmann and Donna Ward:
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