Submitted by AMC4x4 t3_yrkyk2 in newhampshire
I hope so. The question is - what legislation and priorities can the FS loonies hold hostage with the entire House?
Credit where it’s due, NH Republicans don’t take kindly to overt attempts to force them to do stuff. And the FS movement ain’t subtle. Pretty sure the FS reps will come out with a ransom list and the GOP will tell them to get bent.
The House Majority Leader is a Free Stater.
We don’t know who the majority will be.
The current majority leader is a pragmatist. He’ll go whichever way the wind blows.
>And the FS movement ain’t subtle.
Just had what I suspect is one of them come at me HARD in a comment here. I'm not sure why they think coming out at the get-go being obstinate and belligerent toward others is going to win hearts and minds, but I don't claim to understand the libertarian/FS psyche, so there's that.
All of them. I'm guessing we ain't seen nothing yet.
I think you're right. If anything, I think 2022-2024 is going to show the entire country which legislators/reps are serious, and which aren't - state-by-state, and nationwide.
What does the majestic loon have to do with those FS carpetbaggers?
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Calling your political opponents pedophiles, the epitome of reasoned discourse.
I guess if the free state church didn't get raided for selling kiddie porn... maybe the FBI was also the epitome of reasoned discourse?
edit: or the libertarian twitter could stop saying the worst shit.
There has been at least one case of someone espousing pedophilia being kicked out of the FSP. There are a lot of parents in the FSP and they along with everyone else care immensely about protecting children. You are fighting against a made up caricature of your political opponents. It would be like me calling all Democrats pedophiles because a few notable cases, or calling all Republicans sexual abusers because of a few cases
Have you paid attention to the shit that goes down at the libertarian convention? That shit is nuts, and apparently mainstream enough to get brought up at the convention.
Nah, I just watch the news and libertarian twitter. They demonize themselves just fine. Sorry if you are a part of that "what if the child consents' crowd.
Ah yes. The old, "turn a loss into a win" scam.
Fascist-Staters are embarrassingly predictable.
Nothing more predictable than calling your political opponent a fascist. How embarrassing for you.
If the jackboot fits...
Man, if anti-statists are fascists then I must have missed Mussolini completely rewriting the ideaology before his death.
I’m fairly sure you’ve missed a lot of things.
Man, if the Democratic People's Republic of Korea aren't a democratic republic, I must have missed Kim Il Sung completely rewriting the ideology before his death.
Now you understand why I think the name of "Antifa" is 100% ironic.
Because you don't know what fascism is?
No, because you don't. Fascism is government supremacy and direction of the nominally-privately-owned means of production. Energizing the populace via hatred of an ethnic minority was Hitler's unique twist on it - contrast Mussolini and Franco.
China is practically fascist today, and has been transitioning in that direction ever since Mao's democidal failures taught them the same lesson that Hitler learned by reading the news from Lenin's Russia - communism is mortally inefficient because it centralizes not just the big goals like a dictator wants to, but also all of the tiny little decisions that are easily made on-the-ground in a decentralized capitalistic manner. The United States, meanwhile, has been fascist ever since the New Deal - we became the monster we sought to destroy.
As for more recent history ... ever since the end of the Occupy movement, the biggest and most-governmentally-controlled corporations, i.e. the fascist machine, have pushed the message of woke-ism, and that is the very same message Antifa shouted as they looted minority-owned small businesses back in 2020.
Psst: you're not anti-state, you're anti-"we're not running the state".
You don't seem to know your opponents very well. Many want literal anarchy.
Probably because they think they would be on top of the food chain. More often than not they'd be sorely mistaken.
>. Many want literal anarchy.
Define "many". Is that five people? Ten?
Considering that the shitbag Jeremy Kaufmann only got 10k votes, what you consider to be "many" is still an irrelevant minority compared with the numbers the other groups are posting.
As usual, Fascist-Staters are delusional. They gotta make mountains out of molehills because that's all their tiny minds can conceive of.
We gotta get rid of these radical misfits
I think overall, this was a nationwide and local vote against chaos. If this trench warfare looks like the normal legislative process, voters might be OK with it. If it turns into a circus of obstruction and chaos, it's going to be a very interesting 2024.
NH GOP caucus had a roaring 2020-2022 legislative agenda and passed a ton of stuff. You keep conflating the national GOP with NH state GOP.
I'm not. A lot of that local legislation wasn't popular. The question is, are the Free Staters/GOP going to double down on the culture war issues?
I mean it's been a circus of obstruction and chaos since 2000 basically. This country is always been center right and center left. And the rich support the crazies because it's beneficial to the 1% to have the people divided. And So it goes.
What are you doing to achieve this?
Voting locally and never letting people forget that the FSP wants to be forgotten so they can keep nibbling away the state like rats in the sewer.
Out of sight, out of mind is exactly what they want.
The legislators?
Simply not true. One vote from chaos? Sure.
Without extra votes to burn they either have to listen to the worst extremists or reach across the aisle for some moderates’ support.
Which way will they go?
The comments in this sub are always so predictable. Imagine thinking more freedom and less government is fascism. Morons.
Seek professional help. Fearing FSers being a boogeyman has pushed you over the edge.
Yeah we do have more control now, despite not technically as many freestaters elected. If a bill wants to get passed it either needs to be bipartisan or it needs to have freestater support.
Yup. Weird how that worked out. I wonder what the overall voter intent was with handing more legislative power to the Democrats? If the Free Staters under the cover of Republicans push their agenda too hard and just obstruct any attempt at bipartisanship (standing ground against any perceived center-left pieces of legislation) I wonder if there will be further pushback in two years?
Youre getting no center left economic bills through (GOP caucus is unified there, plus we control Senate and Gov), but theres a good chance more police accountability, civil asset forfeiture reform/abolishment, drug legalization, civil liberty improvement bills will make their way through. Basically the Dems have no power to push stuff like gun control, taxes, or welfare spending. Thats DOA.
Um, since when was gun control, taxes, etc. EVER going to gain traction in the NH legislature? You're conflating the national Democratic organization with the local NH Democrats. The two are different in makeup.
Also LOL'd at "civil liberty improvement bills." :D
They tried those things when they had majority power in 2007-2010. Even recently they tried passing off some welfare scheme to end run an income tax by not calling it while "taking money out of your paycheck for it".
As for recent events: https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2022/06/03/after-uvalde-shooting-little-chance-of-new-gun-laws-in-new-hampshire/
Rep. Casey Conley, a Dover Democrat who had helped fight for Rogers’ background check bill this year, said that that withdrawal was strategic.
The reality was, after the election two falls ago, there was not going to be much appetite for gun safety legislation, unfortunately,” he said. “So I think lawmakers made the decision that: ‘Why go down this road for something that’s going to be have no chance?’”
"I would say that that may well be part of it,” Cote said of firearms legislation. “I’m not sure what individual members plan to do and what things they plan to emphasize.”
For the record, NH state democrats have voted against every gun rights expansion measure like CACR 8 last session, and when they had control of the house years back, they voted for more gun restrictions.
I hear this claim a lot, but when you look at the actual votes NH democrat's are indeed voting against gun rights.
No one mentioned expansion. We were talking about control.
I don't remember any bills from ten years ago... Care to share? Would love to be informed if any of them were draconian, because even ten years ago I think anything that wasn't pure common-sense, the Dems knew would be rejected so I'd be surprised if it was anything radical.
They were veto'd by Sununu. Yeah, they were not AWB's or magazine bans, iirc it was waiting periods or something. You can probably google it and find it but I don't care to do that lol. All gun control is just inching away rights, so none of it can ever be supported.
It's literally very clearly now unconstitutional under Bruen, so they fact that they are knowingly trying to pass unconstitutional laws to revoke your rights is troubling.
I've lived in NYC and the thought of everyone carrying is kinda horrifying. There's room for sensible gun laws that a clear majority of gun owners support. Polls suck, but nothing much has changed regarding sentiment for 'sensible' regulation.
Well, can't agree with that.
Nothing sensible about assuming ownership and control over others and disarming them against their will with the state's armed agents.
This is the issue you and your lot had Tuesday - you're unwilling to have reasonable discussions. I talk about 'sensible,' something supported by everyone but special interests, and you jump to "disarming."
Goodnight.
All the Republicans I talked to thought there was a red wave coming because the economy has been so shitty. They didn't realize the Democrats care more about abortion than the economy.
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I dont think the Republicans having a plan matters so much to voters. Republicans and Democrats always end up being fairly similar in that way anyhow (Republicans also cause inflation through massive money printing). But most voters vote -against- issues, not for, and when the economy is bad people will vote against who they perceive as causing it.
>They didn't realize the Democrats care more about abortion than the economy.
That's a funny way with words.
I think it's more accurate to say that Ds cared more about rights being stripped away from an entire class of people that had the effect of moving the country back 50 years than <---->
R's recently had control and didnt end abortion. Thankfully since the freestaters believe in body autonomy and they have a voting bloc there's little chance of abortion being outlawed here.
Good point
You will lose different rights whether you vote R or D.
A fully R state government kept 24 week legal abortion, so that's not a rational fear really.
Yeah, but the fears of the nationwide ban I'm sure had a ripple effect on legislature votes. It's a rational fear. For 50 years, people thought it wasn't. Now they know it is, thanks to GOP overreach nationally.
I am not in favor of abortion bans, but abortion was definitely never a right in the constitution. The supreme court decision was right as a matter of honest interpretation, even though I disagree with the outcome.
The GOP never should have advocated for a national legislative ban, just like the Dems never should have said they would codify Roe which is clearly a 10th amendment violation.
The problem with abortion is that it's a divisive issue with no clear ethical solution because it involves weighing parental rights against termination of a potential human.
Under our system the correct approach is probably to amend the constitution. But our system is hardly workable as it is, so probably not super realistic.
But as far as the state legislature, that's irrelevant really.
>abortion was definitely never a right in the constitution
Neither were a lot of things. Right to a fair trial, right to vote, right to a jury of peers, right to marriage, right to privacy, etc. I don't think we want to go down this road, right?
Oh that’s definitely the road some of them want to go down.
Well I'm not stating my normative opinion when I say that. The constitution is what it is. Some of those are in the bill of rights explicitly. Others are not.
I think the 9th amendment should have been given teeth from the begining to preserve rights that were not powers expressly delegated to the government. It is the "left wing" jurists who have always voted in favor of expanding state power to legislate in areas arguably protected by individual rights.
The problem with just making rights up out of whole cloth is that they can be taken away using the same logic.
This is one area I disagree with Anti Federalists about. The 10th amendment should have been the defacto writ of personal rights because its not specific and when you get specific you then get shit well its not expressly mentioned so that right doesnt exist. Constitution should have been only about restricting the Government (and for the most part it is), not about codifying any specific right.
Should the Government....no.
To be honest, I think it's more than that. The economy for most is annoying and a little scary, but I think people understand the underlying challenges. If the job market had been more like 2008 going into the election it obviously would have been a wipeout.
I don't think the distractions about kitty litter and other cultural issues did the Republicans any favors. It indicated to many voters that these are unserious people, and NH's voting majority has always been more pragmatic than emotional, no matter if they're liberal or conservative individually. That's my hot take on it anyway, I could be wrong.
We have more FSers and NHLA aligned reps now than last election. Iirc we have 97 now compared to 94 last session.
Oh, damn I thought it went down. Excellent.
You mean Free State Project? lmfao what? Y'all gotta learn about the movement. Republican wins aren't helping them at all.
Read the article. You're wrong, but you're also right.
Haha I decided to waste my time and open that article. It doesn't even talk about the FSP. Are you shittin me AMC4x4? If you think it helps them write up an article, make a relatable title, and post the content. You're just making things up here... You should probably learn about the movement before you end up looking this ridiculous. They follow this subreddit ya know. You can ask for an invite to their discord servers...
How about instead of taking a few sentences to insult me, we have a conversation like two rational people? If you didn't see in the article where they were referring to the Free Staters, you could have just asked. Here's the relevant part, which refers to the "libertarian leaning right-wing Republican legislators." Forgive me in advance if I was wrong and that there is, in fact, a SECOND set of libertarian leaning right-wing Republican legislators besides the Free Staters. Imagine having two completely different groups with identical goals? Call me educated, friend. Thanks for your input.
If this is the attitude in which they welcome folks who aren't embedded in their ecosphere already, it's obvious why they're not winning hearts and minds here. You might want to work on your outreach.
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"The narrower majorities could have the paradoxical effect of making legislation less bipartisan, Brown argues.
“We actually had a very narrow majority, relatively speaking, the past couple years, and we saw that rather than bringing bipartisanship to the fore, it gave a lot of power to the libertarian leaning right-wing Republican legislators who very successfully leveraged their voting power to get some of their priorities into the state budget,” Brown said. “So the narrow margin had the effect of actually creating a budget that was farther to the right.”
And with the space for error so slim, any member could be the spoiler vote. “Everybody has infinite leverage,” said Berry.
In order to shore up votes, the next House speaker and their majority team will need to be strategic. They may need to make concessions with more hardline members of their party to get something approved. Or they might attempt to find moderate members across the aisle who are willing to buck their party.
One approach could lead to more ideological bills; the other could lead to more watered-down, neutral legislation. Berry predicts much more of the latter will prevail.
But those seeking to create those rebel factions will also need to be careful, Berry argues. Voting against key legislation too often could reduce the effectiveness of the threat.
“The expression is ‘shoot the hostage,’ right?” he said. “You know, it only takes four or five people to continue to shoot the hostage and it’s like, ‘Well, they’re just gonna shoot the hostage.’”
"How about instead of taking a few sentences to insult me, we have a conversation like two rational people?"
I appreciate you trying to have a good discussion and I hope I haven't discouraged you from trying to do so in the future, but this post was frustrating for me.
I have interacted with FSP. I know a handful of them personally. I've been in their discord server(s). I understand what they like and what they don't like. So I can tell real fast how much somebody knows about the FSP when they start talking about it.
My truly humble advice;
If we don't know much about a topic then, we should not be talking about the topic. We should be asking questions instead.
They should not be described as "libertarian leaning right-wing Republican legislators" because that's very different from what they are...
Republicans and FSP are two very different things. Republicans love America and are patriotic. FSP want to secede "from the union" (as they put it) because they don't like the U.S.. Those are two core principles of those two groups and they're opposite.
On one FSP run discord server if you're liberal you do not get access to the entire server. You have access to two channels (out of 20+); rules and 'Questions-for-Libertarians'. So you can read the rules and ask questions to the oh so superior FSP. That's opposite of a core principle of libertarians, free speech.
They're not libertarian and they're not conservative.
>I appreciate you trying to have a good discussion and I hope I haven't discouraged you from trying to do so in the future, but this post was frustrating for me.
>
>I have interacted with FSP. I know a handful of them personally. I've been in their discord server(s). I understand what they like and what they don't like. So I can tell real fast how much somebody knows about the FSP when they start talking about it.
It's fine. We all get out of hand and react emotionally sometimes.
I read your comment and I get it. But I'll just say this, and please take this as *MY* own humble advice to be passed on to them if you like - and of course, this is JUST my opinion as someone who obviously is not embedded in their movement.
If the Free State Project folks truly aren't libertarian and not conservative, they have a real messaging issue in this state - one that I think they're going to have a tremendously difficult time countering at this late stage.
You cannot expect that folks are going to go into Discord servers and join groups to really dig into the nuance of the movement, or any movement for that matter. You just can't. You have to start with broad public outreach.
You can blame the media if you want, or blame progressives, or even conservatives who don't want to be lumped in with them for the current perception among most Granite Staters regarding the FSP, but the real fact is that everyone knows what their goal was right from the get go, because they stated it before they even arrived here. The goal was get as many people to move to NH so they could take over local town offices and the Legislature and slash government everywhere to be "more free."
My perception is that most traditional NH types reject that as an "invasion" in the same way they have always told Massachusetts liberals to leave their politics there when they move here. It's like "hey - we're giving you more freedom for your own good!"
Yes, the goal is to limit government toward protection of individual rights, but that message is LOST because some of the perceived execution of that goal has been from a bunch of abrasive, boneheaded idiots pushing things like slashing local school budgets in half (Croydon) and trying to force privatization of a beloved local recreational area.
In short, the movement needs better public representation. I don't think you'll find anyone who isn't a FSP member who would disagree. They're in a bubble, and the perception from the outside is that they don't seek compromise. Indeed, when their tactics are rejected by constituents, instead of attempting outreach and persuasion, they retreat/resign, and double-down with blog posts by Ian Underwood and others trying to gaslight everyone on FSP goals. If I could, I'd tell him he's not fooling anyone.
The point of my posting the article was to explain the need for them to be less belligerent in their messaging and negotiations. The *possibility* now exists, with an evenly divided chamber, that the FSP are going to say, "you'll take your freedom or you'll get obstruction." Now, we don't KNOW that's the road they're going to take, but the fact is they can now POTENTIALLY wield greater power in the GOP caucus. What actually happens depends on how much they can hammer out any kind of reasonable legislation amongst their own side before they even try crossing the aisle with it.
Again, just my take, so I'm not claiming to speak for anyone other than myself, just a mid-50's year old guy who has seen a lot of NH politics over the years.
I'm obviously a progressive, and if we keep this civil, I'm more than happy to discuss things with you and even learn more about the FSP. I think there are a lot of areas where progressives and FSP folks could potentially intersect, oddly enough. The problem is emotions get high because the two sides are kind of considered the "extremes" as it were, legitimately or not, and that's why I get it... but trust me, I don't agree with the belligerence on my own left wing of this party, so maybe we can proceed with some deep breaths lol.
Classic how people shit on free staters & libertarians so much when all they really want is for the government to leave us all alone to make our own choices without so much overreach.
They want the government to leave us alone except abortion, sympathy strikes, malicious compliance...
Oh and education.
The kids will get all the education they need cutting sheet metal on the assembly line
People are free to strike, youre just not allowed to prevent people from being hired to do your job as you strike. Abortion is legal up until 24 weeks and Republicans do not want to change that. Anywhere else in the world you propose abortion legal to 24 weeks youre called pro choice, but yes Republicans need to be more clear so voters understand where their position is (Id say 60% FSers self identify as pro choice anyways).
NH GOP expanded overall freedom in the last legislative session. I know lots of good bills coming down the pipe (that most Dems would also classify as good).
There are actually some pretty strict regulations on who can strike, how, and when. You're just not aware of them because libertarians have never given serious thought to labor.
The abortion thing is fun. Any other ways we might like to use the standards set in Europe?
To be clear, you're saying that Republicans are okay with abortion until 24 weeks?
If that's really what the Free Staters were for instead of moving into areas and imposing their will on longtime residents, I think we'd have no reason to shit on Free Staters. But that's not what we've seen over the last decade or so from them.
Libertarianism as a personal credo is fine and even admirable.
Libertarianism as a political ideology is Anarchy with window-dressing and ignores the realities of living in a society. It's the political version of sticking your fingers in your ears.
Maggie Hassan LIED in all her political ads!! Claiming independence and crossing the aisle, not doing everything Biden and Schumer want… what a bunch of suckers the population is.
I wish she'd work with Republicans less than she does....but I'll take a punch in the nuts over Buldoc lol. Dudes a fuckin disaster.
Bolduc is a war hero
Only if scratching one's asscrack and then sniffing it is considered deployment.
And a two-faced coward who changes his platform radically depending on who he’s trying to talk to.
He has no honor, so I don’t really give a shit that he was a general, unless his character is due to all the brain damage he has, but then he still shouldn’t be in Congress.
Big talk on the internet, but you wouldn’t have the balls to call Garry H a liar to his face. He’d drop you like a bad habit, troll.
She killed a higher minimum wage, what more do you want?
dojijosu t1_ivubg4r wrote
I think what is more likely is what "reasonable" Republicans we have left are going to find they have more in common with Democrats then the FS loonies.