Apr. 18, 2011 -- COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- In state after state, Republicans are moving swiftly past blunted Democratic opposition to turn a conservative wish-list into law.
Their successes, spurred by big election gains in November, go well beyond the spending cuts forced on states by the fiscal crunch and tea party agitation. Republican governors and state legislators are bringing abortion restrictions into effect from Virginia to Arizona, expanding gun rights north and south, pushing polling-station photo ID laws that are anathema to Democrats and taking on public sector unions anywhere they can.
All this as the thinned ranks of Democrats find themselves outmaneuvered in statehouses where they once put up a fight. In many states, they are unable to do much except hope that voters will see these actions as an overreach by the Republicans they elected — an accidental revolution to be reversed down the road.
A tug to the right was in the cards ever since voters put the GOP in charge of 25 legislatures and 29 governors' offices in the 2010 elections. That is turning out to be every bit as key to shaping the nation's ideological direction as anything happening in Washington.
