Yes the before times. I voted Republican for most of my voting life. We had decent Republicans in NJ. One governor even chose to increase taxes to pay for schools. He was out after one term. Governor Kean was another one. The party needs to be willing to support difficult policies. But its policies are really just tax cuts and slogans. A good example is Florida. They have real environmental challenges - yet development continues. The Governor does little re the challenges but instead looks to excite the anger of the Republican base over issues that are irrelevant in the big picture.

In NJ in the 1990s Democratic Gov. Florio raised the income tax to put the state on a sound footing (re pensions and other commitments) replaced by Gov. Whitman, she reduced taxes and set the states finances back into a black hole. Another GOP governor, Chris Christie cancelled the capstone to a 20 year public transportation project in order to use the money for other projects - and to embellish his chances to run for president.

While there remain competent GOP governors (Ohio's is an example) the GOP has no overall platform to address the problems we have - all they have is debater's points to attack Democrats.

Crime is an example. In NJ and NY, the cash bail program has resulted in real injustice to the poorest of those arrested. And bail reform does not appear to be related to the rise in crime over the last 3 years. But it is an easy attack point.

Homelessness is another problem. Cities attract the homeless, especially cities with multi family housing and public transit. And our laws make simplistic ideas of how to deal with the problem impossible. So one cannot just arrest or otherwise inter the homeless. And COVID took away many of the jobs that the poor relied on. So folks lost their support system - and homelessness increased. Is there a genuine GOP idea about how to deal with it? No - but GOP candidates continue to insist that it is Democratic ideas that created homelessness.

So the GOP needs a lot more to regain my support. Yes the liberals can be tiresome. But they are honest about the problems.