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Tsunami
Coming!
The
warring tribes that call themselves the Virginia
Republican Party had better settle their differences
over taxes or else there could be a big shake-up at
the polls.
Don’t
be lulled to sleep by this budget thing.
Sure,
it seems to have degenerated into an exercise in
dulling, numbing tedium.
But brace yourself.
The budget is going to get sorted out.
Then the real show starts — the aftermath.
A
political tsunami has the potential to swamp the
House of Delegates.
The
heart of the matter lies in this old political
maxim: If
you’ve got the votes, call the roll.
If you don’t have them, negotiate.
Of
course, the magic number in the House is still 51.
And the magic question is:
Who can find that number first?
With
Republicans holding a nearly 2-1 majority in the
House, you would think that’s a rather academic
sort of question. But
it’s not.
You
see, that Republican majority is not so much a
monolithic nation-state as it is a loose federation
of warring tribes.
Virginia
Republicans did well together when facing a common
enemy, very well — governorship and both state
houses, both U.S. Senate seats, three-fourths of the
U S. House seats, and a slew of local stuff.
But
then they ran out of territory to conquer and the
plague of prosperity set in.
What
they should have done was beat their swords into
ploughshares, and take up the arts — like
governing, and such. But
what did they do? Like
good barbarians, they tribed back up and turned on
each other.
Here’s
the astonishing thing:
Some of the dimmer bulbs of that lot are
still at it — still issuing threats to their own,
still promising primary opposition, and so on,
little cognizant of the fact that they’ve already
beaten away enough of them — 17, to be
exact — to turn the political world upside down in
Virginia.
Okay,
a quick math review here.
What’s the magic number?
That’s right, 51.
What’s 17 Republicans and 35 Democrats?
Who gets there first?
You broke the code!
Could
they force… say… a compromise on the budget?
Let me think.
Mmmm… yes. They
could (and did) force a compromise on the budget.
Okay,
now let’s think for a minute in the abstract.
Let’s just say that this coalition drifts
into conversation about things other than the
budget. What
would the possibilities be then?
Could
they force the election of a new speaker?
Absolutely. Could
they force the appointment of new committee
chairmen? Absolutely.
Let’s
save some time and space here.
Is there anything that they couldn’t do? Is
there anything they couldn’t force?
No. Nothing.
In legislative terms, they could stop the
clocks. In
legislative terms, they could make water run uphill.
In legislative terms, they can do anything
— anything — they darn well please.
Politically,
could they set off the equivalent of a political
tsunami? You
bet your sweet backside they could.
Will
they do it?
I
think a lot of that depends on the behavior of some
of these dimmer bulbs in the Republican Party who
still don’t get it, who still don’t understand
that you can’t threaten and badger all of your
troops like you can some of them, who still
fundamentally don’t understand the implications of
that magic number 51.
I
am certain of this: The
longer people like Kate Obenshain Griffin, the
Republican Party Chairman, and Paul Jost and Peter
Ferrara and Grover Norquist and others of their
take-no-prisoner-we’ll-get-you-
at-the-polls
ilk throw the rocks of the Anti-Tax Right at their
own folks, the higher the probability of just such a
scenario.
If
this shrieking goes on long enough — and there is
no sign of abatement yet — then the brash,
defiant, Republican battle cry, “No New Taxes!”
could be replaced by a louder, more desperate one:
“Tsunami
coming!”
Let’s
keep our fingers crossed.
No.
I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean to say that.
What I meant to say was:
Gee. Let’s
hope that doesn’t happen.
That would just break my heart.
--
April 26, 2004
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