GOP Legislators Must Be More Than Social Media Influencers.

Contributed by Jersey Conservative

It is a sad and familiar refrain: “It’s not our fault; we can’t do anything until we are in the majority.”

Being a legislator is a great part-time job. It’s high-status and now pays more ($82,000) than the average state resident earns in full-time employment. Most legislators have at least one full-time paycheck on top of their legislative salary.

Every GOP legislator claims to be a good Republican and wants to do the right thing, but why even run for office, if all you are going to do is make excuses and embrace your role as a well-paid eunuch? Here’s how one GOP legislator ended a recent op-ed on Save Jersey:

Voters hire legislators like the one above to represent them in Trenton and what they’re told is, “We aren’t up to the job, we can’t do the work, so it is up to you, the people who hired us.”

Imagine if you hired a contractor who told you that. Would you keep him?

Some think it is enough to simply propose legislation and then do nothing to build the grassroots coalition necessary to get it passed – or at least to make the Democrats pay a price for blocking its passage. Such “deadhead” legislation is designed so that these well-paid politicians can point to something around election time. Something besides their complete failure.

Some legislators retreat to their social media pages to become “influencers” in a non-stop pissing-match with both Democrats and Republicans they “dislike”. Except that we have plenty of “influencers” already and few legislators to do what they are paid to do: Find a way to represent the people who hired them.

If the voters were looking to hire $82,000-a-year social media “influencers”, there are a lot better around with larger followings than any of the current legislators going that route. It isn’t your job.

But these legislators are allowed to get away with it and keep on collecting their full-time salary for part-time work. Hey, it’s a great scam.

Instead of making excuses and copping out, why don’t Republicans remember their leaders who faced a similar situation. For example, let’s look at Newt Gingrich, who ended four decades of Democrat rule in the U.S. House of Representatives. What would Newt do?

In 1989, Gingrich became the House minority whip, vowing to make his caucus more aggressive, grassroots, and activist. He was a unifier who brought factions together and didn’t allow members’ personal dislikes to get in the way of building a majority.

Gingrich understood the use of language and the importance of amplifying a message. They called it “speaking like Newt”. Every Republican member and every Republican candidate used the same words to describe the same contrasts with the Democrats. Instead of a hundred different voices – it was once voice coming out of 100 different mouths.

This enabled the “Contract with America” – a platform that nationalized the 1994 congressional elections. Republicans picked up 54 seats and took control of the House for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was President. Since then, Republicans have controlled 12 of the 16 congresses.

There are too many legislative prima donnas in the GOP caucus. Watch how they recoil over criticism of their lack of progress on any given issue. They believe they are above public scrutiny. That the First Amendment is for them to piss on other people but not to suffer a reply. Zero self-awareness.

They have their fat salaries to go along with their permanent minority status and think all they need to do is spend taxpayers’ money having legislation drafted (they don’t do it themselves) that will do little more than gratify their egos. When they do tout a legislative “success” it is usually a Democrat bill that the Democrat sponsor wanted to make look “bipartisan”.

Other than this, they spend their time nursing grievances and petty hates. They forget that leadership grows a party, it doesn’t make it smaller.

The first thing for them is to recognize the numbers: 2.3 million Democrats to 1.5 million Republicans. They don’t have the luxury to lose a single activist.

Right now, the GOP in New Jersey behaves like a collection of profit-seeking cartels. It will lose and continue to lose doing so. It is late but not too late to start behaving like a real political party. Hint: What would Newt do?

As this is Easter week, maybe it is an appropriate time for them to embrace the message of Jesus Christ. That they cannot achieve salvation by bragging about their “good works” and that they should “turn the other cheek”.

Or as the poet W. H. Auden put it: “We must love one another or die.”