By Emil Franzi
UNLIKE ALL THE liberals who whine about Newt and the gang trying to slash the federal government, I love it.
I don't much care if they chuck the whole operation and go back to The Articles of Confederation. The damn thing is too big, too expensive and--worst of all--too intrusive. So all this states' rights talk from Phoenix is basically OK with me.
I would also point out the hypocrisy of those liberals who still slobber over central planning and claim giving power back to the states would be turning it over to small, corrupt entities. Aren't these the same folks who also slobber over stuff like UN peace-keeping missions and world conferences in Rio where the USA is an equal with the People's Republic of Dungeon or The Mordida Islands? Places whose population is a tenth and who's wealth is a hundredth of Mississippi's are empowered to make their own decisions, but Delaware and Oregon are too primitive?
Unfortunately, watching the Arizona Legislature and Governor J. Fife Symington III in action indicates we've got a way to go before the feds can cut us loose. There are about 10 states where the governor and both houses of the Arizona Legislature are in GOP hands. Maybe we're atypical and power shifting works in those other places, or even in places where the Demos have a piece of the action. Not so here.
In Arizona, the Demos are basically irrelevant at the state level. Republicans hold every statewide office (although there are strong doubts about nominally GOP Attorney General Grant Woods). The Repubs dominate the state Senate 19-11 and the state House 38-22, as well as the entire Congressional delegation, except for Congressman Ed Pastor. Pastor is the only Democrat left who holds rank above corporal and doesn't draw KP.
Numbers are not the GOP problem in Arizona, however. Lack of coherence and a specific agenda are.
Newt and the Congressional GOP have a contract with America. The GOP types in the Arizona Legislature barely have a contract with each other, let alone Symington. That's understandable--there's just something about the Whiteguy that pisses you off, even when you think he's right.
He has an ambitious program--he wants to lower income taxes, boost economic growth, build more prisons, bust up the education monopoly with vouchers and screw the feds and the environmentalists. Most second-term governors would coast on about half that, like Reagan did in California. Symington obviously wants to be remembered for something else besides the Resolution Trust Corporation, and has toughened up since he first ran in 1990, when he looked and sounded like a moderate weenie.
Symington's biggest problem is he doesn't have a lever to move enough legislators and, lacking that, he doesn't have sufficient charisma or prestige to produce the votes on the floor of either chamber.
But then, neither does anybody else. The GOP leaders of the two houses haven't been around long enough to generate the loyalty base needed to deliver votes. Term limits might make sure nobody ever does. Or maybe speeding up the turnover will speed up the appearance of someone with leadership skills who can put things together for a while. I can waffle on an issue, too.
Newt and Armey seem able to deliver their people. You can tell by all the bitching the congressional Demos do about it. They haven't gone below 90 percent on anything yet, and usually hit 95-plus.
Of course, they had years of coherency training that prepared them to govern. They baby-sat several generations of GOP candidates and think-tanked them along. Then they presented a firm agenda partially constructed around hard poll data and got almost all their folks to sign off before the election. The famous--or infamous, depending on your politics--Contract with America is a consensus concept among Republicans which gives them cohesion.
Cohesion is obviously lacking among Republicans in the Arizona Legislature. They can no longer resolve an issue in party caucus; if they could, we wouldn't have multiple, contradictory education plans introduced, or the tax reduction proposal de jour. As party structures become more meaningless and candidates depend on them even less to get elected, nobody gives a rat's ass what their platforms say anymore. Which destroys one more method of building coherence.
Republicans are also paying for years of mush-mouthing by the once-dominant, and still large, country-club set, which believed it wasn't polite to talk about issues. When you consistently avoid public discussion of policy at the party level, plan on having a policy vacuum when your party hacks get to public office.
What is desperately needed by the Arizona GOP is a state-level version of Heritage or Cato, or something that can get these people on the same page. Or maybe even reading a book.
It's enough to make you miss the last real boss the Legislature had, former majority leader Burton Barr. That he got his ass kicked in the 1986 GOP gubernatorial primary by Evan Mecham indicates he may not have been that competent.
Maybe it's just an Arizona thing. Maybe the rest of the country can handle devolution. But if I were Newt, I'd start some new classes and make some how-to videos aimed at what GOP state legislators are supposed to do after they're elected, particularly if they're in the majority and have a "friendly" governor.
Because it's becoming increasingly obvious that this bunch in Arizona, including the governor, really don't have a clue.
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