Reform Out Of Chaos?

The other day State Senators Dale Volker, George Maziarz and Mike Ranzenhofer wrote an opinion piece in the the Buffalo News arguing that the chaos of the Senate coup lead to much needed reforms.

Citing various Democrat broken promises (such as the failure to name Bill Stachowski chairman of the Senate Finance Committee to represent Western New York, the lack of openness and transparency, and the raising of taxes) they lay out a good case defending the coup and its results.

These events make clear Democrats couldn’t or wouldn’t bring reform to Albany or cease their reckless spending. Therefore, we acted to stop it.

Six weeks later, the Senate has passed the most significant, sweeping reforms in the chamber’s history, making the chamber more open, transparent and accountable.

We instituted term limits for leaders and committee chairs, made it easier for members to bring bills to the floor and provided more equitable resources for all senators.

We aren’t proud of the gridlock that temporarily prevented us from doing the people’s business, however, these reforms wouldn’t have been achieved without the actions we took on June 8.

That’s all fine and good, but, do the people of New York see it that way? According to recent polls, they do not, and while doing what is best for the state is more important than getting credit for it, if the wrong party gets credit for being the party of reform, then that doesn’t help the cause in the long run.

Perhaps one day New Yorkers will see that the Democratic Party isn’t representing their best interests, but right now, the polls show exactly what I feared they would… and they show that more New Yorkers still trust the Democrats and consider them the party of reform. Of course since this is another ridiculously blue state that may not be surprising, but the coup didn’t appear to improve public perception of the Republican Party at all… in fact, it helped nudge Governor David Paterson’s numbers up a bit.

Sometimes it isn’t just about what you do, it is how you do it. In my opinion, the coup was ill-advised.

The Buffalo Bean Twitter Recommendations, Part 1

In addition to the list of worthy local blogs in the blogroll to your right, for those of you on Twitter, I thought I would post a list of some local Republicans/conservatives that you ought to follow: