Imagine that after years of bad cell phone service you changed providers three months ago and, now, once again face the old problems.

Further imagine that when you complain customer service says, “Well, your old provider dropped your calls, and billed you incorrectly. Why do you expect any better from us?”

That’s what we’re hearing from state Republicans these days.

Let me open with a stipulation: Democrats set a lot of bad-government precedent for the bad Republican behavior of recent years. Democrats gerrymandered districts, killed Republican bills for partisan purposes, stripped the lieutenant governor’s office of non-constitutional powers, and more.

There’s a listing of Democratic sins at under “Remember When.” It’s all there, and most of it is right, although I take exception to their spin on the gubernatorial veto.

In the Legislative Building last week, when they weren’t having protestors arrested, Republican legislators were bringing up all of these Democratic sins, some of which occurred decades ago.

They cried over the times the new and then returning Gov. Jim Hunt fired the appointees of two outgoing Republican governors, overlooking that both of those governors and Gov. Pat McCrory fired Democrats when they took office.

All of which just makes me want to scream, “Children, behave!”

This is not about you. It’s about the citizens of North Carolina, and you can’t justify your bad behavior with a recounting of someone else’s bad behavior.

Left out of this run of back and forth finger pointing about settling old scores is any discussion of what is best for the people of this state. Democrats didn’t consider that when they behaved badly and now Republicans aren’t either.

Take education policy. When McCrory won, Republicans changed education governance. When he lost, they changed it back. Their biggest concern is that a Republican control education policy; what’s best for our children appears to be an afterthought.

Can’t you just hear Republican customer service? “Yes, ma’am, we changed your son’s arithmetic homework because Mather Slaughter fired a Republican 40 years ago.”

Voters in 2011 and 2013 had good reason to throw the Democrats out of the legislature first and the governor’s mansion second. Voters expected Republicans “to drain the swamp,” to quote another politician, and to behave better.

But Republicans took office, fired Democrats and got to abusing the legislative process even more egregiously than the Democrats had for all those years. The GOP defense is, “Your previous cell phone carrier…”

It’s like little Johnny telling mom he misbehaved in school because “Billy did it, too.”

To which every mom replies, “If Billy jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?”

One is left with the sense that maintaining power is more important to the current legislature than is the public interest.

Are we better off with the new elections system? Who knows? We didn’t really debate it.

If Republicans think they really had a good idea, then they should have presented it in open legislative hearings and allowed citizens to comment. But they didn’t. They just rushed the change into law, citing Democratic abuses from the disco era as justification.

When you change cell phone providers, you expect the new company to provide better service, not to provide more poor service and blame it on your former provider’s precedent.

Same principle applies to governing.

Paul T. O’Connor has covered state government for 38 years.

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