Republican Legislative Gains Tug Nation To Right - BostonHerald/AP

[WillyT]

Republican legislative gains tug nation to right
By Ann Sanner and Calvin Woodward
Associated Press / April 18, 2011

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COLUMBUS, Ohio—In state after state, Republicans are moving swiftly past blunted Democratic opposition to turn a conservative wish-list into law. Their successes, spurred by big election gains in November, go well beyond the spending cuts forced on states by the fiscal crunch and tea party agitation. Republican governors and state legislators are bringing abortion restrictions into effect from Virginia to Arizona, expanding gun rights north and south, pushing polling-station photo ID laws that are anathema to Democrats and taking on public sector unions anywhere they can.

All this as the thinned ranks of Democrats find themselves outmaneuvered in statehouses where they once put up a fight. In many states, they are unable to do much except hope that voters will see these actions as an overreach by the Republicans they elected -- an accidental revolution to be reversed down the road.

A tug to the right was in the cards ever since voters put the GOP in charge of 25 legislatures and 29 governors' offices in the 2010 elections. That is turning out to be every bit as key to shaping the nation's ideological direction as anything happening in Washington. A close-up review of the first wave of legislative action by Associated Press statehouse reporters shows the striking degree to which the GOP has been able to break through gridlock and achieve improbable ends. The historic and wildly contentious curbs on public sector bargaining in Wisconsin, quickly followed by similar action in Ohio, were but a signal that the status quo is being challenged on multiple fronts in many places.

The realignment in Florida has produced a law imposing more accountability on teachers, along with 18 proposed abortion restrictions, some bound to become law. Immigration controls are motivating lawmakers far from borders, constitutional amendments against gay marriage are picking up steam, Michigan and Missouri shortened the period people can get jobless benefits and Indiana may soon have the broadest school voucher program in the U.S. At least 20 states are going after public-sector benefits, pay or bargaining rights.

In Virginia, Republicans used a deft legislative maneuver to enact a law that could close many of the state's 21 abortion clinics. In Missouri, a presidential swing state where Republicans are at their strongest numbers in decades, a tax cut sought by business for 10 years has been given final legislative approval and Democrats are putting up little resistance to Republican priorities they once tied in knots.

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More: http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2011/04/18/republican_legislative_gains_tug_nation_to_right/

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