EDITORIAL: Oh, GOP

EDITORIAL: Oh, GOP

It was just a few weeks ago that the Republican Party appeared poised to pick up 20-30 seats in a takeover of the House of Representatives, take the majority of the U.S. Senate and make President Joe Biden’s second two years just miserable.

But a series of serious missteps are stacking up, and one playing out in Rhode Island exemplifies the incompetence.

In DC, prominent GOP leaders have called for the FBI to be "defunded." The FBI which in its history has only been led by white, male Republicans.

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Closer to home, the GOP is making the same type of blunders.

On Tuesday, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) issued a press release calling the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) a "radical organization,” after the LCV endorsed Democrat Seth Magaziner and has made a media buy to support him.

Republicans used to compete and sometimes win the endorsements of environmental groups. Both Rhode Island GOP Senators John Chafee and Lincoln Chafee were strongly supported the LCV. The group poured money into Rhode Island to beat Democrats with lesser environmental records.

The GOP, for decades, created a strategic alliance between hunters and conservationists to support open space preservation and the protection of national parks. Those national parks were created by Republican President Teddy Roosevelt.

Now, the NRCC appears to be driven to make the highly competitive Allan Fung look like an out-of-touch, crazed Trumpite.

“Accepting help from a radical group that wants to weaken American energy only highlights that Silver Spoon Seth Magaziner is extraordinarily out of touch and has probably never personally paid an energy bill in his life,”  said NRCC spokeswoman Samantha Bullock in a statement issued Tuesday.

Yes, Magaziner has an $800,000 silver spoon in his mouth — the amount that someone funneled to him to launch his political career, which he refuses to disclose, but the Washington GOP fails to understand that Rhode Islanders appreciate the environment and are not wonderfully interested in calling preeminent environmental groups a “radical organization.”

Fung is arguably far more personally popular than Magaziner and has every opportunity to win the second congressional district seat, but these constant and ever-increasing missteps by the ultra-right wing of the GOP is an out-of-step with the vast majority of Rhode Islanders and a sure way to take a potential GOP pick-up and turn it into another Rhode Island Democratic victory.

Rhode Islanders love clambakes, but you need a clean bay to produce edible clams.

Beaches covered with raw feces and discarded medical needles were a reality in Rhode Island in the 1980s.

It took legislative action like the Clean Water Act to reverse the pollution trends and help to return Rhode Island waters to be boatable and swimmable.

Fung needs to assert himself as a Rhode Island-focused Republican before he loses yet another winnable race due to DC-Republican interference.