Opinion | We’ve witnessed the solution to Alabama’s awful government

“Please clap.”

Do you remember that line, uttered by once-upon-a-time presidential candidate Jeb Bush? It came during the 2016 campaign, during a stop in New Hampshire, when Bush begged a small crowd to respond after his applause line fell flat. It all but murdered Bush’s campaign.

And up until recently, it was the saddest thing I’d ever seen in politics.

Then the Alabama Republicans got together recently and promised to kill the grocery tax.

Look, I get it. The poll numbers are awful and getting worse day by day. The guy y’all hitched your wagons to—the two-bit con man who you refused to criticize even when he broke laws and violated the Constitution—is now a stone tied around your necks. And Alabama voters, drowning in debt and inflation, aren’t responding to your usual scare tactics where you vilify at-risk children or try some wink-and-nod racism.

And so, a grocery tax cut is it.

Please clap.

Somewhere, former state Representative John Knight is amazed. Because he first started trying to get the grocery tax repealed in the 1990s. Banged his head against that wall for the better part of his entire public service.

And now, some 30 years later, here y’all are acting like it’s your idea. Or an idea that you didn’t repeatedly rebuff all of those years, calling it “too costly” for the state’s education budget.

Except here’s a story few people will tell you: Knight actually had a plan to offset the repeal of the grocery tax. He would replace that revenue by undoing the exemption that allows (mostly wealthy) people to deduct their federal income tax off their state returns.

Guess which party opposed that.

See, that’s the box that Republicans have put themselves in—a box they desperately want you to imagine isn’t there. Because they’ve owned this state government for decades now. For the last 16 years, they’ve controlled every state office and held supermajorities in both houses.

Everything that’s bad here, they did it.

Everything you don’t like about the government here, they’re responsible for it.

And pretty much every time they come up with an idea to fix anything, the Democrats—who have been advocating for the working class and poor all along—have already proposed it.

Hell, last session, the Democrats tried to push through a full repeal of the grocery tax. Republicans ignored it—wouldn’t even bring it up for a vote—and instead tried to pass a sales tax holiday on … guns.

But all of a sudden, now that the poll numbers are sagging and Republicans in and around the major cities are looking at a November massacre, they’re out here making grand promises and “really listening” to voters. All of a sudden, they want you to believe that they care as Democrats do.

Call me crazy, but in this sort of situation, I think I’d skip the imitation and just vote for the real thing.

Regardless, though, isn’t this nice?

I want all of you—Republican, Democrat, independent, conservative, liberal, whatever—to stop and look at what’s happening right now. Truly, truly consider what’s going on.

Your lawmakers are listening to you.

You are threatening to vote them out, regardless of their party affiliation, and they are bending over backward—embarrassing themselves with mea culpas—to please you.

Just the way it’s supposed to be.

They’re denouncing data centers. They’re calling each other out. They’re repealing a tax that’ll help poor people. They’re fighting with cops over cameras. Some of the Republicans refused to go to the Trump rally in Mobile. They’re talking about housing affordability.

This is what happens when you have two parties—when you have options. When you’re not voting for a stupid party and are instead voting for individual candidates who are responsive to your issues and concerns.

This. Is. How. Government. Is. Supposed. To. Work.

Imagine what we could accomplish if we stuck to this. Think of the schools we could fund. Think of the corporate tax breaks we could squash. Think of the brother-in-law deals we could kill. Think of the corrupt jackasses we could send to jail.

Look, there are some fundamental differences in the things we think government should do. There’s no question about that. I know my preference that government provide significant assistance to the poor and cut benefits for the wealthy and prosperous businesses runs counter to the wishes of more fiscally conservative voters.

But there are a whole bunch of things that almost all of us agree on. And one of those things is that the government of Alabama has historically sucked. It has too often been dysfunctional. It has too often catered to the elites. It has too often leaned into corruption. It has way, way too often failed to listen to the majority of the voters in this state.

If that grocery tax press conference told us anything, it’s that this is the way to get the government we want.

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