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by rayiner
2149 days ago
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Whenever people point out how poorly government services are run everywhere in America, someone replies (like OP) that it’s because Republicans “sabotage” the operation of government. My point isn’t that Republicans could run it better; my point is that you can’t blame dysfunctional government on Republican “sabotage” when so many state and local government services controlled by Democrats is also dysfunctional. We’re seeing this happen with police. Police funding and administration is almost entirely a local matter. If Chicago PD is running CIA-style interrogation sites (or what’s happening in Baltimore or Atlanta or Minneapolis) you can’t blame Republicans. If schools aren’t good or transit is bad, or housing is expensive, you can’t blame Republican “sabotage.” It’s a perverse argument. It’s saying to disregard Democrats’ obvious failures to run government services—it would all be better if you just gave Democrats more power. (That is not to say that Republicans would run things better. For the most part, they wouldn’t even claim to, and would point to that as justification for doing less. My recently-red/trending purple Maryland county has pretty good government services, but mostly because it doesn’t try to do much.) |
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I take your broader point that it's unproductive to pin the productivity concerns of the public sector on Republicans; especially in state government, I probably agree with you in sort of assigning good governance and management to the GOP, and expanding public employment and benefit rolls to Democrats.
But, like, I think you'll have a hard time making the argument that run amok policing isn't at least somewhat attributable to Republican voters. It's not "sabotage", in the mostly-mythical Grover Norquist sense, but it's a public policy mistake they mostly own.