Bill Straub: Limiting debate not their finest hour as Republicans exert new muscle in Frankfort

WASHINGTON – There’s an old story – much too good to fact check – about Earl K. Long, who became governor of the sovereign state of Louisiana back in the late fifties by making outrageous promises to the bankers and oilmen who owned the joint lock, stock and barrel.

On inauguration day ol’ Earl took up residence in his new office in Baton Rouge and pretty soon the bankers and oil men showed up in the anteroom waiting to cash in on his outrageous promises. And Earl kept them waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

After a while his flustered secretary entered the sanctuary and asked, “What do you want me to tell these men?’’

“Tell them their governor lied,’’ Earl responded.

The Earl Long story stands as a prime example of the old bait-and-switch, usually employed by used car salesmen who sorrowfully say the Jaguar XKE on sale for $15,000 had been scooped up but you can have this nice 1976 Yugo for the same price.

It’s also regularly employed on the political scene, often with great success, with some used car salesman of a politician promising a new day, great enlightenment, even a draining of the swamp in a simple exchange for your vote. And right now Kentucky appears to be the epicenter of such activity.

For decades Republican state legislators have complained, with justification, about the treatment accorded them by majority Democrats. The GOP solons found it nearly impossible to get their bills passed (unless you were someone like former Sen. Art Schmidt, R-Cold Spring, who simply found a friendly Democrat to front legislation for him). Their amendments would get pushed aside and the Speaker of the House would, on occasion, gavel debate down before they got a chance to speak.

All legitimate grievances. The GOP members often vowed, if their fortunes improved and positions reversed, democracy and sunshine would prevail.

Well the Republicans are now in the majority in the House, Senate and governor’s mansion and, of course, they have managed in a very short period of time to make an undemocratic system even more undemocratic.

Having claimed the lower chamber for the first time in more than 90 years, Republicans, with a 64-36 advantage, decided it was time for some rules changes. One of them grants the new GOP majority the power to limit debate on a bill to one hour – something even the Democrats never sought or considered.

That new rule allowed the GOP to rush through three major pieces of legislation – HB1, which made Kentucky a right-to-work state, HB2, which would force a woman seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound, and HB3, which repealed the prevailing wage law.

All three of these bills are ill-considered and stupid, but that’s not the point. They are major pieces of legislation and Democratic foes were afforded a mere 30 minutes of debate to lay their views before the general public. Democrats did a lot of untoward things while they were in charge of the House, but limiting discussion of a substantial proposal to a half hour wasn’t one of them.

On top of that, in an obvious abuse of power, Republicans at the last minute, just off the House floor, transformed some of these bills into what are called committee substitutes, which effectively barred Democrats, or Republicans for that matter, from offering amendments and providing an opportunity to make their case for change.

It doesn’t get any less democratic – small D democratic — than that. Yet you have lawmakers like Rep. Daniel Elliott, R-Danville, enthusing that “one of the most inspiring aspects of our new majority is the restoration of honesty and transparency that we all have been searching for in Frankfort.’’

As Mark Twain once noted, “Why, not even a burglar could have said it better.’’

House Speaker Jeff Hoover, R-Jamestown, who assumed his high office with a solid reputation for integrity, which now seems misplaced, indicated changes were made to move things along.

Hoover told CN2 that limiting discussion was not a big deal because just about every member of the House knew how they would vote on the bills.

“We thought it was fair to give each side 30 minutes to state their position,” Hoover said. “That’s a fair way to do it.”

Does anyone believe Hoover would have felt that way if he was still the minority leader instead of the Speaker? It’s patently unfair to impose such a rule on a body where freewheeling debate from both sides of the aisle was historically commonplace. And he knows it.

The prophetic words of Pete Townsend are always worth repeating: Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Now, traveling 426 miles from Frankfort to the east we discover our old pal, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Louisville, in Washington DC, the master of the bait-and-switch, embarrassing himself yet again.

Political observers will remember that McConnell steadfastly refused to so much as consider President Obama’s nomination of U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. That nomination was made on March 16, 2016 and McConnell’s anti-constitutional position, rendered for purely political reasons, has left the high court bereft. It all means the court will probably operate without its full complement for a year, give or take.

Well, ol’ Mitch is concerned that paybacks may prove to be hell and the Democratic minority in the upper chamber, now led by Sen. Charles Schumer, of New York, may just filibuster any Supreme Court nomination rendered by the president-elect, whose name, for some reason, I find impossible to type on a keyboard without growing ill.

McConnell doesn’t much care for his political opponents making him eat the same dirt he fed them and he lashed out at the prospect, asserting that, “Apparently, there’s yet a new standard now, which is to not confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all. I think that’s something that the American people simply will not tolerate, and we’ll be looking forward to receiving a Supreme Court nomination and moving forward on it.”

McConnell, it appears, is totally oblivious to the fact that he set the new standard and, for better or worse, the American people did tolerate it. There’s hypocrisy, folks, and then there’s Addison Mitchell McConnell.

Ah, but it gets better.

Mitch is attempting to rush through the president-elect’s cabinet choices even though some of them have yet to emerge from the usual round of background checks. The Office of Government Ethics responded to the situation last week in a letter to congressional Democrats saying that the situation created “potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues.”

Schumer and his fellow Democrats sought a delay in the confirmation hearings until the candidates can be fully vetted. McConnell, as is his usual practice turned a deaf ear and expressed a determination to proceed.

It didn’t end there. Appearing on Face the Nation on Sunday, McConnell said protesting Democrats should “grow up.’’

“All of these little procedural complaints are related to their frustration at having not only lost the White House, but having lost the Senate,” said.

But McConnell apparently forgot that he sent a letter to then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, in 2009 regarding Obama’s cabinet nominees demanding the same thing Democrats are seeking this year – that all candidates be fully vetted before their confirmation hearings.

So Schumer responded in kind, sending the 2009 letter McConnell wrote to Reid, crossing out Reid’s name and writing in Mitch, and crossing out McConnell’s name as signatory and writing in his own.

McConnell’s lifelong desire was to become the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. Now that he lays claim to it he’s showing just what a ridiculous figure he has become.

Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.