Lessons about "The Enemy Within"... Part 3 – The Enablers

The first lesson about “The Enemy Within*...” dealt with the fact that “We [Republicans in New York State and Brooklyn] have been betrayed” and that is because “Republican principals of whatever stripe or self-identification have consistently paid lip service to conservative Republican principles and for expediency have been accommodationists with liberal Democrats and other advocates of bigger and bigger government....” and that “... [h]ere in Brooklyn... State Senator Martin Golden... [f]or his whole time in government [ ] has largely served the interests of big government state-ists and authoritarians.”    The second lesson “belled the cat” of public employee unions on the federal, state and local level as a fundamental internal threat to our democratic-republic. Particular attention was paid to The New York State Public Employee Conference (NYSPEC), Peter D. Meringolo, that organization’s Chairman, and State Senator Martin Golden, the so-called Brooklyn Republican-Conservative, who was the keynote speaker at this year’s NYSPEC legislative event at the NYS Capitol.

This lesson will shine a light on the principal enablers of State Senator Martin Golden and other false conservative Republicans here in Brooklyn and across this state.

MIKE LONG  AND  JERRY KASSAR

It would be too pat to use this post as a point of departure for a rant against the Conservative Party and its leaders Mike Long and Jerry Kassar. However, Long and Kassar are the principal enablers of Senator Golden. Golden’s endorsement by the NYS Conservative Party and his regular and repeated appearance on the Conservative Party line provides a fig leaf to that state senator, who is –  at best a mediocre conservative and at worst –  a wholly owned operative of New York City and State public employee leaders and lobbyists. Even though this column could easily viciously attack both Long and Kassar for being the false conservatives and the venal betrayers of their followers that they clearly are, all of that will await other posts on other days.

By the way, we recently experienced an epiphenomenon of where this is all leading with our local GOP-Cons state senator. Last week, it was put on vivid display with Golden’s “secret” private one-on-one breakfast meeting with New York City’s Sandinista-Democrat Mayor, Bill deBlasio (a meeting about whose substance the two elected official participants agreed not to inform the public [Hmmm, could any part of  it involve Golden’s support in Albany for tax increases to pay for “universal Pre-K ?]). Don’t be surprised at what might happen next.

THE OTHER ENABLERS

Although Mike Long and Jerry Kassar are Golden’s principal enablers, there are many, many others. Those people are part and parcel of a cabal that has repeatedly betrayed the Republican Party and conservative minded voters for over twenty years in its most recent incarnation.

Earlier today, there was an opinion piece by Charles Gasparino in the New York Post ** (See “Republicans for Cuomo sell out cheap” by Charles Gasparino, 2/27/14 [http://nypost.com/2014/02/27/republicans-for-cuomo-sell-out-cheap/]). In the most pithy part of that article, Mr. Gasparino asks us to consider the following: “... Republicans for Cuomo was created four years ago by Mike McKeon, a former flack for the last Republican to run the state, George Pataki. ***  Pataki is a decent man, but after his initial flurry of Reaganesque fiscal conservatism (tax cuts and restraints on government spending in his first years in office), he began to do his best imitation of Govs. Nelson Rockefeller and Mario Cuomo (Andrew’s dad) by cutting deals with unions, spending like crazy and handing out contracts to well-heeled friends. I reported on some of Pataki’s follies at the time — and McKeon was there defending this profligacy every step of the way. ***  Fast forward to now, and McKeon is dishing out the same bromides: Yes, taxes are high under Cuomo, but they’d be higher without him at the helm. The state still spends a lot, but it would spend more without Andrew watching over things. People and businesses are fleeing the state (Florida will soon pass New York in population) but McKeon (like Langone) says it would be a hell of a lot worse if Andrew weren’t around. For all of this, McKeon says, Andrew has “earned” the support of people who believe in limited government and pro-growth economic policies — that is, Republicans. ***  Yeah, and he also has a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.”  Interestingly, Gasparino is quick to hammer GOP money men for their easy-going switch of support from the GOP to the so-called “Republicans for Cuomo”; but he dismisses that as the ages-old pay-to-play politics that is always in vogue.

If all of that sounds familiar, it’s because the same bromides and faulty  reasoning are used to befuddle and in some cases compel Republican organizations around the state to fight to maintain the current ruling coalition in the NYS Senate under Dean Skelos and Jeff Klein.

Is it any wonder that somebody like State Senator Martin Golden is more beholden to the likes of men and women similar to Cuomo's Mike McKeon, and to the leaders and lobbyists of the public employee unions, than he is to his rank-and-file GOP and Conservative Party supporters and other constituents back in his Brooklyn district ?

With his free pass from Conservatives like Long and Kassar, and from his own toadies in the Brooklyn GOP like the so-called “Republicans for Change,” who could possibly stop Golden’s other enablers from causing him to binge on what Gasparino described as “...cutting deals with unions, spending like crazy and handing out contracts to well-heeled friends...” ?

________________________________________

*  Although there was a book with a similar sounding title about certain corrupt unions by Robert F. Kennedy, the series of articles/posts “Lessons about ‘The Enemy Within...’ ”  on this blog has no connection whatsoever to that work by Senator Kennedy. Even if there is a discussion in this series of the corrupting influence of certain classes of unions upon government, any possible overlap of material is merely coincidental.

** Interestingly this article by Charles Gasparino was linked on the New York State Conservative Party website, where it was both paraphrased and quoted (See “FEBRUARY 27, 2014 –  by Shaun Marie, on Feb 27, 2014” Conservative Party of New York State [http://cpnys.netboots.net/posts/february-27-2014]). I guess the leaders and spokespersons for NYS Conservative Party are either the world's biggest phonies and hypocrites; or they just didn't see that they have essentially been doing the same things as the self-styled "Republicans for Cuomo."   The Conservatives leaders that I know are quite crafty, so I have to conclude it's the phoniness and hypocrisy that is on display, rather than any lack of insight as to the real nature of the Conservative Party in today's politics.