OXFORD — As Election Day approached, Republicans in Mississippi had a collective theme: Look at what we’ve done for Mississippi, and we’ve only just begun.
A majority of voters agreed, fueling a transition that is, well, historic.
Consider that former Gov. Kirk Fordice, when he took office in 1992, broke a string of Democratic governors dating to 1870.
More impressively, consider that Democrats held a majority in the Mississippi Legislature for 130 years until just four years ago when Republicans edged them out.
In January, when November’s gains are realized, the Grand Old Party will have, or nearly have, veto-proof strength in the Capitol — not that they would ever have cause to override the party’s head guy, Gov. Phil Bryant, who broke his own record margin of victory in winning a second term.
Of course, it needs to be pointed out that Republicans today don’t share the ideology of their forebears in the latter 1800s. Ames was a carpetbagger, a Union Army general elected during Reconstruction when the Party of Lincoln prevailed.
Today’s Republicans are conservatives who spend a lot of time trying to out-conservative one another. And their ranks have grown due in part to the message sown by many, including state party chairman Joe Nosef, who insists there’s no longer any room for conservatives in the Democratic Party.
When Republicans got power, they dominated the drawing of legislative district lines to amass more.
A couple of thoughts related to the surge:
· Will Mississippi follow the model of states where Republican wins were followed by aggressive welfare reforms? In Maine, the number of able-bodied adults without minor dependents receiving food aid was whacked 80 percent under a “get a job” initiative. Minnesota tightened up in other ways. So has Kansas.
· If Mississippi does follow such a strategy, will there be jobs?
Unemployment statistics are often misunderstood. The numbers are based both on job-seekers (which doesn’t include everyone) and people working in available jobs.
For instance, in October 2,900 job-seekers found employment, but 300 lost their jobs. The net unadjusted figure for that month was 5.9 percent, which was better than 7.2 percent the year before, but still substantially below the national rate for the month, 4.8 percent.
Joblessness is spotty in Mississippi. Six of the 82 counties have employment levels well ahead of the national averages, but a much larger number, mostly in the Delta, have much higher rates than the state as a whole.
Employment was a main tenet of Bryant’s first term, and a theme in his re-election campaign. But the fact is that the state’s jobless rate has consistently been higher than the national average.
· Money. Republicans campaigning for office were especially proud of their “fiscal stewardship,” but the fact is that Mississippi has always balanced its books — even during the decades when those nasty, reckless Democrats held the purse strings. It is a blessing to all Mississippians of any party that the per-capita public debt shared by citizens here is $5,600, half that of Californians and about a third of what each Massachusetts resident owes.
Still, shortly after Election Day, state officials were forced to revise downward their revenue estimate for the remainder of the fiscal year that ends June 30. The economy is simply not as robust as the forecast — nor is it as robust as it is in neighboring states.
One threat to the Republican Party is more internecine battles between those who consider themselves conservatives and those who consider the conservatives not nearly conservative enough. This, plus the temptation to give government money to their big business pals and to punish people for being poor — instead of helping them escape poverty — are their major negatives.
Their positive, as the election results attest, is that the voting public is tired of what they see as an array of government inefficiency and waste and policies that prop up government at the expense of the private sector.
The adage, “With great power comes great responsibility,” is attributed both to Voltaire and to Spiderman, but regardless of who said it first, it certainly applies to members of the Mississippi Republican Party.
The remaining Democrats in the House and the Senate have been pushed to the margins. They have a seat at the table, but that’s all they have.
The big question is whether Republicans — with unprecedented clout — will be innovators who will call on their better angels to help the state and all its people or whether voters four years, eight years, or 12 years will come to believe all they have is talk.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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