Red Alert -- Hawaii Republican Assembly

Margaret Thatcher once defined "consensus" as: "The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: 'I stand for consensus?"

After making comments at this week's Lincoln Day Dinner, it appears that House Minority Leader Aaron Ling Johanson is all too ready to make consensus and the rejection of so called "hyper-partisanship" the Republican strategy for the future.

His words are backed up by actions. Republicans led by Johanson simply appear happy to be able to show up in tiny numbers and 'get along'. This is demonstrated when Johanson and his minority caucus endorsed the Democrat's 2013 budget as being "fiscally responsible" while enthusiastically signing on to new taxes such as the plastic grocery bag tax.

The Hawaii Republican Assembly completely rejects this weak frightened unprincipled approach. Our elected Republicans should be fighting for conservative reform and solutions to our state's issues and strongly making the case why we need many more real "R's" and many fewer "D's". Instead we get Republicans who vote like Democrats. Afterwards, these same Republican legislators make obsequious statements about their Democrat colleagues and then congratulate themselves as if they pulled off a major accomplishment.

Hawaii Republicans deserve much better!