Why Republicans lost the state Senate – By George J. Marlin
This article I wrote appeared in the Watertown Daily Times on November 8, 2008.
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streetcornerconservative.com 
November 13, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Sir,
I respectfully disagree with your decision to heap Dean Skelos in with Joe Bruno and George Pataki. Bruno and Pataki were self-serving whores. In his five months in office, Skelos’ first point of business was to alienate the teachers’ union with his support for a tax cap. His refusal to cut state education aid mid-year was based on the fact that doing so would have amounted to a tax hike at the local level, yet another thing that New York’s tanking economic climate can’t afford. There are many indicators that Skelos will make us proud over the next few years, whether he’s in the minority or the majority.
November 13, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Is there no one who can turn this around? Have all the conservatives left and moved South, leaving us with nothing but a greater percentage of liberals in the NY electorate who will vote for more and more government and higher and higher taxes? Who is going to take the state Republican Party bull by the horns, whip it into shape from top to bottom and provide a viable alternative to the Democrats? Rudy? Who beyond that? I am a conservative on Long Island desperate to help out and do anything to reverse the tide you describe, but the Republican Party certainly is not sufficiently organized to do that and I know of no other organization where I can make a difference. NY suffers from one of the highest local tax rates in the nation, yet the people of NY keep electing Democrats who will drive their taxes higher. The only way this makes any logical sense is if there is no real organized opposition to their policies – and sadly, that’s what’s happened over the past decade in New York. How can conservatives like me at the grassroots help to reverse this trend?