Sudden concern for the principle of majority rule at the state Legislature comes tinged with a little irony.
Only 26 Democrats got elected to the state House. Eleven of them, though, got on the same committee: Revenue and Tax. Democrats locked down the majority there, 11 to 9.
Republicans, who are always pushing for more tax cuts, aren't pleased. Most GOP lawmakers accept that the Democrats played their few cards well, though. House Democrats put themselves in a pretty good position to run interference on tax cuts.
It's possible to get a bill around the committee system, but it's harder for the full chamber of the House to vote a bill out of a committee than it is in the Senate. All the Senate requires is a majority vote. The House requires two-thirds. Even in the Senate, overriding a committee is very rare.
Some very conservative Republicans around the state were upset when the House committee dust settled. That's where the irony comes in.
In March, there were some very hard-fought Republican primaries, particularly here in the northwest. A whole wing of the state GOP tried to win just 26 House races out of 100. The goal was to get enough votes to derail the majority on health care, the so-called "Arkansas Works" plan.
It takes a three-quarters majority to pass a state budget for health care spending. So, if the anti-"Arkansas Works" side could get one-forth of the seats plus one in either chamber, they could exercise a sort of minority veto. They intended to do so.
Some of the very same conservative faithful who loudly supported the attempt to get a 26-member minority choke-hold back in the March primaries got upset when the Democrats applied what was very much the same sort of tactic in November with committees. There were some notable differences. For example, the Democrats succeeded.
How the Democrats succeeded is worth mentioning. They convinced their members to pick the committee the party needed instead of the ones they each wanted. It worked the same way in 2012, the last time a Republican House majority got outmaneuvered by Democrats. The GOP lost -- then and now -- because the Democrats displayed remarkable party discipline. Putting "Democrats" and "party discipline" in the same sentence isn't something I'm used to yet, but that's my problem. Discipline was shown. Something similar happened in the state Senate in 2014, too. The Senate changed the rules this week to prevent Democrats from doing the same thing again.
The complaints quickly quieted down as people realized the price the Democrats had to pay. They had to give up any big presence on any other committees. After all, many GOP lawmakers picked other committees exactly because they have bills they want those committees to approve. That job just became easier.
There's a bigger issue being missed in all this inside baseball about rules and committees, though. Democrats have the votes for a "choke hold" veto of their own. Note that the size of the Democratic caucus in the House is precisely the 26 votes needed to block a three-fourths vote. Likewise, they still will have nine in the Senate.
The provision that requires a three-fourths vote for appropriations (except for paying for schools, highways and the state's debts) is in the state Constitution, not some legislative rule book. In other words, it's as close to being set in stone as it can get.
There's only so far a minority can be pushed under this system. As I said a few times in the "choke hold" primaries, that small-group veto thing cuts both ways.
The amazing thing about all this is: I'm old enough to remember when the Republicans got their 26th vote in the House. That was a long time ago. I'd barely gotten moved into Northwest Arkansas. It seemed like such a small thing for a party to be happy about -- not being able to be ignored any more.
So perhaps I'm more sensitive to irony that most. I still remember what it was like for Republicans to be the "one-fourth-plus-one" caucus. It's a perk of my job -- if you stick with it long enough, to always see how the shoe fits the other foot.
Commentary on 11/19/2016