Inexperience is the bane of every endeavor.  While to ensure the future stability of any entity youth must be trained, the process of passing on knowledge has often led the strength of mastery to the tenuous edge of destruction.   The responsibility of the master to teach and guide coupled with the student’s requirement to assimilate and emulate is an age old art form that has either flourished through time or crumbled causing plans and ideas to be mere footnotes in history, whispers of what could have been.

The Republican legislature has been plagued with a lack of leadership and, as a result, the freshmen legislators have been wandering around the people’s chambers listlessly tossed here and there with every nuance of outcry and debate from the minority party.  This has caused the people, who own those chambers by the way, to grow very impatient with the majority party.  Yes, Republicans, you are in the majority.  You don’t need to ask permission from the Democrats to pass legislation to free the people.

This confusion was on heightened display this past week when three freshmen Republican legislators quivered on their resolve to vote to pass LD 1534 out of committee, which would have been a strong step toward repealing LURC and returning land rights back to the people; instead, in keeping with the pattern established by Senator Katz and the Pretentious Eight, these frightened freshmen sold their votes to the Democrats for votes on lesser bills.  Because of their unholy alliance with the Democrats, the bill was placed on hold until next session and a commission was formed to study the effects of LURC and look at different options to deal with it.  What?  Forty years of wrecking havoc on rural Maine is not enough?

Since the Senate President and Speaker of the House are having trouble keeping the “kiddos” in line, this humble columnist….very humble….very, very humble columnist has a few specific points help these space cadets gain some focus.

1.     You are the majority.  Act like it.  The people of Maine had enough of forty years of Democrat policies.  They decided to give you a shot.  Why try and mix in what Mainers had forty years too much of?  If memory serves, the polls during the election showed the major concerns of voters to be budget, jobs, and landowner rights.  Yeah, bipartisanship wasn’t even a blip on the radar screen; neither was the Governor being nice and sweet.

2.     You represent the people that voted you in.  No, the Tea Party didn’t go away and by voting against this bill you went against private landowners.  I’m thinking the Tea Party may feel a little betrayed.  Just a little.   These freshmen may find a lesson in a primary election battle in their future primer.

3.     Grow up!  Take responsibility for your own actions.  No, you can’t blame it on the grumpy Governor anymore because the people of Maine are getting even grumpier and they make Governor Grumps look like the tea princess.

4.     Realize this is war.  An ideological war.  You were sent there for a reason.  The people have had enough.  They have forty years of big government shoved down their throats and they have drawn a line in the sand.  Unfortunately, you have not.  The people were expecting a counterattack to take back ground lost.  So far, there has been too much pacifying and placating of the party deposed.  You have been played for fools.  So then, freshmen, if you cannot pass muster, perhaps you should be replaced.