Maine has something of a bi-polar disorder. They have purple US Republican senators, democrat congressman (still) and just elected a tea party-ish backed governor while handing their entire state legislature over to Republican control for the first time in about 30 years.
Why do that?
For all the why’s and what-fors that can be imagined, at the end of the day it is hard to ignore the pressure from on high. Two years of high-profile democrat campaigning to advance what turned out to be a very unpopular progressive-national agenda, was felt most strongly in the places where voters felt they have the most control–local state house and state senate races. It’s been true all across the country.
Moderate to democrat Maine, it seems is no different. In a state that has let the left dominate state government for decades, Republicans successfully sold the need to be more state-centric and that resonated locally, perhaps to fend off the nationalization of local government from massive federal overreach.
The State Supreme court announced that is sees a conflict between current state law and spending cap initiatives approved by voters (Manchester in particular). This is not unexpected but it is fortuitous, and to some degree ironic. In their quest to defend any liberal-leaning municipalities desire to spend beyond the ability of their residents to pay for it, groups like Keep Manchester Moving have just financed the blueprint by which the now Republican super-majority state government can adroitly engineer a fix.
There’s something you might want to keep in mind about the state level Democrat wind machine as we move forward toward 2012.
Jobs numbers are tricky things. Politicians will always tell you what you want to hear and leave out what they don’t want you to hear. So it is no surprise that we are getting the same old song and dance, that "the economy created private sector jobs again." That’s a nice thing to hear, but is it an improvement or are we still arranging deck chairs on the Titanic?