I think they just want us barefoot and pregnant, and I’m disgusted. The atmosphere of the whole Republican Party has been going backwards, and the moderates are lost. The religious argument is bogus, because I think they’re just using that as a political tool.
— GOP state Rep. Priscilla Lockwood, on Republican efforts to allow employers and insurers to place limits on insurance coverage for birth control.
“He’s a little bit like a giant hairball that the Republican Party cat is trying to cough up. They can’t swallow it and they can’t get rid of it.”
— Howard Fineman, editorial director of the AOL Huffington Post Media Group, on Mitt Romney.
While Republicans led by David Bates in New Hampshire continue to be doubling down their opposition to gay marriage, most — if not all — polls (including those conducted by Republican pollsters) show that more than 60 percent of New Hampshire residents believe the issue is settled, and the Legislature should move on to other business. If Bates and Company get their way, we may see the impossible happen — Republicans could actually lose more than 100 seats to lose control of the NH House.
— GOP state Rep. Steve Vaillancourt, on Republican efforts to repeal same-sex marriage
The tragedy is that Republicans won so many seats in 2010 that O’Brien and company have come to believe that they can do absolutely anything they choose. To hell with the spirit of compromise. To hell with the Constitution. Let despotism rule. That’s the modus operandi for Speaker O’Brien…
— GOP state Rep. Steve Vaillancourt
“We know it was a bad week for the House speaker, what with his Newt Gingrich endorsement fizzling out and all. But did he really endorse the garbage O’Keefe grinds out all to serve his voter ID agenda?”
— Jeff Feingold, Editor of New Hampshire Business Review, on state House Speaker Bill O’Brien.
“I’m A, not going to wear a mask and B, still going to go to Laconia to visit my mother.”
— Brad Cook, Ballot Law Commission Chairman, responding to Rep. Harry Accornero who threatened him saying, “You’re going to have to face the citizens of Laconia. You better wear a mask.”
These are all supporters of the current house leadership who is now trying to distance themselves from their supporters. What it shows is what happens when you disagree with these people and it is good for the general public to see what the rest of us have to put up with. You now know why the legislature is as screwed up as it is. Somebody needs to save us from ourselves.
— GOP State House Rep. Lee Quandt on the nine state lawmakers who supported the “birther” complaint to keep President Obama off the ballot in the 2012 New Hampshire presidential primary.
They are really unraveling every bit of the social compact that we have come, not only to count on, but have come to believe is the right thing for us to be doing. So the ladder that many of us worked our way up into the middle class, every rung of that ladder is being broken. …
So he wants to take us backwards and let everybody be on their own. What I want to do, what Democrats have always done, is say that we’re stronger and better together and we can move forward that way.
— Maggie Hassan, Democratic gubernatorial candidate on House Speaker Bill O’Brien and the New Hampshire legislature.
Dave O’Brien, who claims to be the brother of New Hampshire state House Speaker Bill O’Brien, says we should ask tough questions and challenge the Speaker’s “mendacious political bullshit.”
My brother has been getting an unimpeded pass for over a year. … Given the damage he apparently is intent [on] causing, perhaps the time has come to begin to tell the truth about him … the hypocrisy of his stated beliefs [versus the] reality of historical behavior.
It was an outrageous usurpation of executive authority and a mockery of the values on which this nation was founded. It sought to eliminate the only effective tool this country has to punish terrorists, the federal courts, and create a system of unchecked military detention with no judicial or even Congressional review.
—New York Times, on Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s attempt to prohibit the U.S. from prosecuting foreign terrorist suspects in civilian courts
Since that 2010 election, John Lynch has been all that has stood between New Hampshire and the crazed ideologue wing of the Republican Party that now controls the New Hampshire Legislature. Speaker Bill O’Brien thought he could make John Lynch irrelevant; instead John Lynch and his veto pen have made the governor more important than ever.
— Kathy Sullivan, DNC member and former New Hampshire Democratic Party chair, on Gov. John Lynch
[T]he decision of the supreme court in Opinion of the Justices, 162 N.H. 160 (2011) is incorrect and a further manifestation of the court’s demonstrated hostility to representative government and its propensity unconstitutionally to interfere with the political process, and should be and hereby is repudiated and utterly rejected.
— House Resolution 13, sponsored by House Speaker Bill O’Brien and seven Republican House members, responding to the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling that a House bill requiring the attorney general to join the lawsuit challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.
A progressive perspective on New Hampshire politics and other oddities.
William Tucker is an architect in Portsmouth.
