Monday, May 11, 2009
Legislature / Woods Redrum at the Capitol: A Doomsday Cult Has Abducted Our Legislature
Posted by Jeff Woods on Mon, May 11, 2009 at 5:53 AM
Even by the legislature's standards, it's strange. Last week, the House voted to give state sanction to the diplomas of a freaky subset of home schoolers who are basically sitting around waiting for the End of Days but unfortunately need jobs in the meantime. They hold the godless government in contempt and refuse to disclose what they're supposedly learning in their home schools, but they want their diplomas to count on government job applications.
"That's great," snorted one wiseacre who works for the legislature. "Maybe I should stand out here and write up diplomas to my 'School of Hard Knocks.' They'd be worth just as much."
This is the kind of stuff that's making Republicans the exclusive party of married white fundamentalist Christians and an endangered species outside the old Confederacy. Here, though, it's the heyday of the hard-core culture warriors. They have dominated our impartial Kook Power Rankings, with Tony "Capt. Apocalypse" Shipley invoking God's wrath against gays, Glen Casada watching the sky for black helicopters, and Frank Niceley claiming arsenic is good for you, etc. As the state budget is debated over the next few weeks, they'll endear themselves further to the cranky teabag crowd by trying to reject the federal stimulus money and make unnecessarily deep cuts in services.
But it's too easy to place all the blame with Republicans. Democrats are guilty of aiding and abetting. On guns and abortion, especially, there's been bipartisanship. Democrats do a quick cost-benefit calculation, shrug and cave. They figure it's not worth the trouble in their next election campaigns. They don't talk much about the GOP's extremist agenda. It's been weeks since they bothered to hold a press conference.
The state's most popular Democrat, Gov. Phil Bredesen, won't speak out, either. He's under the naive impression that if he lays off those nutty legislators, they will repay him by accepting his budget as-is. He might as well try to befriend a pack of rabid dogs.
Most political professionals would have advised Republicans, as the state's new majority party, not to turn off voters by overreaching and acting like holier-than-thou asshats. Instead, they've thrown caution to the wind, setting free their inner ideologue. (They can't help themselves; they really are crazy.) But no worries: Democrats are letting them get away with it.
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