I’ve described the civil war between the two factions of the Republican Party in Virginia, and even said that the shift of power back to Democrats had begun, but an important point that I have been missing is the central role that House Speaker Bill Howell plays in all of this. That’s where the Charlottesville Daily Progress‘s Bob Gibson comes in, because he’s paid to be way smarter than me:
Although only a fledgling speaker, Howell, 61, is perfecting a new regime of “payback as you go.”
Any Republican delegate with the words “no new taxes” stuck in his throat and unable to spit them out, even when the budget was not in balance and basic state services were not yet met, could be subjected to the “Howell Maneuver.”
As developed in the past six months, the maneuver works like this: The delegate choking on those words is approached from behind, grabbed forcefully and given a sudden, sharp punch to the gut.
This procedure is performed after soothing assurances that any tax words emitted from the delegate’s throat would not threaten his standing in the House committee structure.
[…]
A group of anti-tax Republicans has hired Florida pollsters and threatened to go after any GOP officeholders who don’t hue and cry to their brand of anti-tax hunting. The groups gunning for more moderate Republicans who supported tax increases to pay for more adequate state services and balance the budget have largely failed to shoot down their targets, a failure that enrages their circular-shaped firing squad.
[…]
Howell is smart enough to see, however, that every time he jerks a chair from a moderate promised no retribution he is pushing moderate business leaders who admire Bryant and Jones more firmly into the Democratic camp. And this in an election year.
I’ve chopped up Gibson’s writing considerably, so read the story on the Progress‘s website (while you still can; they’re in the midst of enforcing registration) to get the full treatment.
Gibson makes a couple of points here, both of which bear repeating.
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| House Speaker Bill Howell. |
First, Howell’s back-stabbing is making the Democratic Party more and more attractive to formerly-conservative, now-centrist Republicans. (They haven’t changed, Republicans in the general assembly have.) But, like Republicans in Washington, Republicans in Richmond are fat and sassy after their few terms of dominance, and figure they can get away with anything. Of course, they can’t.
Second, Gibson cites the possibility that what we’re seeing at work here is not Virginia Republicans. They’re just puppets. Their strings are being pulled by Grover Norquist and his cronies at The Club for Growth and Americans for Tax Reform. Virginia means nothing to these guys. They simply know what many of us in Virginia already know — that November 2005 could set in motion actions that will help to determine whether Republicans retain their stranglehold on Congress in ’06, and which party gets the White House in ’08. Norquist is such a horrible little man that radical right commentary Tucker Carlson once called him “a mean-spirited, humorless, dishonest little creep…an embarrassing anomaly, the leering, drunken uncle everyone else wishes would stay home.”
What happens in Virginia this year is a very big deal. Here’s hoping that Bill Howell is so power-drunk and wallet-fattened by Club for Growth that he tilts the table my way.