This is no surprise, as for nearly the full two years since VT Democrats got walloped in the 2024 elections, I and many others have been observing that their only plan to regain power (running on their bat-crazy agenda not being a viable option) is to shriek “Orange Man Bad!” Then hope enough Vermont voters are ignorant enough about how state and federal governments are separate and responsible for different aspects of our lives. Maybe they’re right. November 4 will tell.
So, of course, with the predictability of Burlington businesses shuttering their doors under the economic anvil of Progressive policy rule, Democrat Senate Majority Leader, aspiring President Pro Tem, and thoroughly repugnant political hack Kesha Ram Hinsdale (D-Chittenden SE) launched a press release with one week to go, including the fiery accusation, “Vermont Republicans want the benefits of Trump’s political machine without being held responsible for its actions.”
Does she mean the Republicans in the only state that voted for Nikki Haley in the 2024 primary? Is she referring to the Republican governor who voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? Let’s just say this accusation is a wee bit far-fetched.
But here’s how Ram Hinsdale tries to make these overcooked strands of spaghetti stick to the wall; national Republican strategists, she says, are “Tell[ing] state Republicans to run away from Washington and claim they only care about local issues.” Sooooooo… the fact that Vermont Republican candidates are – and have been for two years now – focusing on state issues such as property taxes, land use, energy costs, healthcare, and public education reform and put forward a detailed plan, Vermont Promise, to deal with these issues is proof that they are actually not focused on those things but are rather all in on some nefarious Washington agenda. Uh huh.
Yes, it is absurd. And anyone who buys this is a nitwit. But it gets even more absurd and nitwittier. Because Ram Hinsdale’s screed wouldn’t be a true Democrat smear without that ubiquitous cherry on top: the “race card.” And it, like her wild game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game to link Vermont Republicans with Donald Trump, requires a Gumbyesque amount of stretch.
Here Ram Hinsdale points to a social media post by Josh Bechhoefer, the VTGOP’s National Committeeman, “mocking” (her word) the Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate’s agenda for Vermont. First of all, it deserves to be mocked. It’s a warmed-over collection of the dumbest, most repeatedly failed, socialist pipe-dreams the world has ever known. But here’s what Bechhoefer said — word for word, so I can’t be accused of biased editing:
I’m curious how on God’s green Earth that Amanda Janoo is going to increase revenue, finance new programs, slow economic growth to 0% real growth, and increase quality of life.
This is not economically possible, even liquidating the entire net worth of the top ten percent of this state, which would collapse this state. The way forward is to broaden the tax base, increase the number of businesses that want to be here to employ people and maintain demographic stability, and build houses for them.
Zero growth is the most basic sense means on average everyone’s paycheck remains the same in real terms, as the amount of goods and services produced in the economy can’t grow. I assume anyone with two brain cells would leave a state that accomplishes this at it’s functionally a command economy.
On the nose! It’s a straightforward, articulate counterargument to Janoo’s absolutely suicidal policy objective to de-grow our state economy, complete with an alternative positive vision in which he believes the state should go. My only problem with Bechhoefer’s post is it isn’t nearly mocking enough, if at all. Come on, Josh! Come up with some real zingers!
The thing that got Ram Hinsdale crying racist crocodile tears was a meme attached to Bechhoefer’s post referencing Nim Chimpsky, an experiment from the 1970s playfully named after well-known communist/socialist Noam Chomsky in which a chimpanzee was taught (or not, as it turned out) to speak sign language. So this – and here we go again with the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game — paired with the fact that Janoo’s father is Malaysian, making Janoo a “woman of color,” makes Bechhoefer’s perfectly logical critique of Janoo’s desire to ZERO GROWTH Vermont’s economy some sort of hate crime, which means (somehow) TRUMP, which means Vermont Republicans are Trump, and racist…with Kevin Bacon.
Ram Hinsdale then states, apparently with a straight face, but I wasn’t there when she wrote this so maybe she was laughing herself silly, or more probably cackling maniacally, “over the past two years, Vermont Republicans have spent more time pushing national GOP priorities than offering local solutions to our rising costs.”
I mean… the jaw drops at the blatant lie that is this statement. For the past two years, it has been Republicans pushing to lower property taxes and reform our failing public school system. Republicans fighting to repeal the Clean Heat Standard – a Democrat flagship policy designed to increase our home heating fuel costs. Republicans trying to repeal the Democrats’ Renewable Energy Standard that is driving up our electric bills. Republicans trying to stop the Democrats from raising our DMV fees. Republicans trying to stop the Democrats from imposing a $100 million-plus per year payroll tax on all of our salaries and taxing our online services. Republicans pushing through – after years of trying – tax cuts for veterans’ pensions and senior citizens’ Social Security.
Meanwhile, if we’re going to be honest (and Ram Hinsdale is not), it is the Democrats who have been hyper-focused on a Washington DC agenda in regard to issues like enforcement of our national immigration laws, pushing for an anti-Israel foreign policy, moving forward with a globalist, anti-rural climate agenda that is economically detrimental to Vermont, and, of course, any and all things Donald Trump, from the Iran war to the Kennedy Center.
It’s all well and good to have opinions on those issues, but Vermont legislators have no power over foreign policy; they won’t be voting on federal legislation, and they’re not going to be able to hinder or help the president build a ballroom, give a golf course a makeover, or deploy a carrier group. The only people on the ballot this cycle who would have some influence in those arenas are Becca Balint (D) and Gerald Malloy (R), who are running for the U.S. House of Representatives. So, confine your feelings about national politics to that election, and for everyone else on the ballot, vote for whoever is going to lower your property taxes, income taxes, fees, and regulatory costs the most. That’s going to be a Republican. Don’t be a dupe and fall for Ram Hinsdale’s dishonest distractions.
