As a KY Republican, I’m begging the party to reconsider our ideological dogmas | Opinion

Wake up Republicans. It should be time for us to reclaim our traditional values of “freedom FROM government” and “reducing the size and cost of government.”

Recall it was our great President Ronald Reagan who warned us that “Government is not the solution to our problems; government IS the problem.”

Last Tuesday’s results beg us to reconsider our ideological dogmas. Elections matter.

Daniel Cameron’s losing percentage margins (47+% statewide, 27+% in Fayette County) eerily mirror totals from last year’s defeat of anti-abortion Amendment #2. As Attorney-General, Cameron was stuck defending what Sean Hannity calls an “untenable” position. Opinions on “rape and incest” exceptions to abortion laws now constitute an unbeatable majority of American voters. Even Donald Trump agrees.

Focus on demonizing transsexual children makes us seem downright creepy.

We can and should take our cues from voters. For the last 30+ years we have trotted out good candidates for countywide partisan offices —only to have them slaughtered at the ballot box.

Even our District’s popular Congressman, Andy Barr, got less than 50 percent of the vote in Fayette County, if you count write-in votes.

Why can’t we think out of the box on behalf of taxpayers? Let us devise ways to get rid of costly, unnecessary bureaucracies. Does Kentucky really need 120 counties and their myriad of tax paid officials? Help me get rid of the unnecessary Office of Fayette County Judge Executive and its corrupt/nepotistic power of vacancy appointments. Why do we pay for the many jailers who have no jails? Why do we continue to nearly bankrupt county fiscal courts, when logically jails and prisons should be consolidated under unified state control?

During the recent campaign, Al Cross and other pundits revived the idea of abolishing the Office of State Treasurer. Out of courtesy, I choose to congratulate my fellow veteran and lawyer, Mark Metcalf, for his recent victory and, perhaps like his predecessors, for his possible aspirations to higher office holding. Yet I ask Mark, after he settles into the job, to ask for a “performance audit,” which might be conducted by the Office of our new State Auditor, Allison Ball. (1) Should the Treasurer’s Office’s primary functions of bookkeeping the state’s treasury be constitutionally merged within the Cabinet for Finance & Administration? And (2) whether the Treasurer’s supposed “gatekeeper” function is so trivial as to be outweighed by the tiny office’s liabilities and vulnerabilities (e.g. to cyber attacks), which might be better protected by combining it with other state administrative protections.

Perhaps the only true fiscally conservative platform for our candidates should be to eliminate this office and other bureaucracies.

Doesn’t it seem obvious to anyone else that when our legislators dip their hands into social legislation, they inevitably create ever enlarging bureaucratic empires, which never go away, with unintended costs? As an example, our Office of Attorney General, until the 1950’s had three employees; now over 200 deal with expanding social concerns.

Yes, I feel a bit like the fired-up news announcer in the old movie, “Network,” who repeatedly stated: “I won’t stop” telling you the truth. Yes, I believe I was the last Republican to win a contested countywide partisan political contest since the Lexington-Fayette merger in 1974. And yes, I ran a fairly close second in the 2015 State Treasurer primary race to the eventual “biggest” winner on my non-funded abolitionist platform. And likewise, I received no state support nor financing when I won a Republican primary. It may be too late for me, but now you might or your friends might offer yourselves to the benefit of our taxpayers.

There are so many ideas which only a party of conservative instincts can pursue. The other party’s activists seem mired in anti-police agitation, “cancel culture” (limiting our freedoms and traditions) and belittling our family values.

Please join me in a righteous “freedom campaign” to invigorate our Grand Old Party.

Jon Larson is the former Fayette County Judge Executive.

This story was originally published November 10, 2023 at 8:37 AM.