Fighting all proposed tax increases, adopting a school and forcing state and local governments to operate within the resources available are just some goals for 2007 of Prince George’s Republican Party, according to its new chair.
“What makes a difference is not the politicians, the grand poo-bahs, the people who drive the yachts,” Mykel Harris said at the Republican Central Committee, Prince George’s County annual fundraising dinner this week. “… It’s you.”
Harris’ other goals include helping the county unite in support of U.S. troops, finding a solution for thetroubled Prince George’s County Hospital system and educating the community about the erosion of voting rights.
“For some reason, there seems to be this persistence to fiddle with our voting system,” Harris told about 140 people at the Comfort Inn Conference Center in Bowie. The event also featured comments from Del. Anthony O’Donnell, who represents Calvert and St. Mary’s counties. O’Donnell told the crowd that Republican House and Senate leaders made a conscious decision this year to pick their battles, so as not to give Democrats an easy target.
“The Democrats are goingto overreach,” he said. “They always do. They are going to crank our taxes so high people are going to be screaming across the state.”
O’Donnell said he thinks Republicans will rebound in 2010.
He expressed displeasure with a variety of legislative actions including giving additional voting rights to felons, proposed tuition breaks to illegal immigrants and more parole opportunities for repeat drug offenders.
O’Donnell was also upset with some inaction, including failure to fix the “state structural deficit” and not creating “sensible health care.”
Conservative author and political pundit Angela McGlowan delivered the keynote address and talked about how she grew up a Democrat and thought Republicans were “racist, sexist, white males that wanted to keep us down.” In a colorful speech, McGlowan criticized Rev. Al Sharpton, saying “welfare moved us from the Southern plantation to the federal plantation” and called on illegal immigrants to “go back home.”
