Category Archives: Politics

Where the Arkansas GOP might divide

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

To sum up the first few weeks of the legislative session: Republicans mostly agree on most of the big things and the few remaining Democrats might as well have stayed home. But that could change – particularly the first part.

After the 2016 elections and three party-switchers, Republicans enjoy a majority of 102 out of 135 seats, and so far, that majority has held together. There was a difference of opinion on whose taxes to raise to offset a tax cut for military retirees, but it was largely settled without too much conflict. It was one of the few instances this session when Gov. Asa Hutchinson did not get exactly what he wanted. Instead, he only got mostly what he wanted.

On the big issues, Democrats have been reduced to filing bills that go nowhere, making fruitless speeches, and losing committee votes. Unfortunately for them, one the most significant bills passed by a Democrat this session may be one by Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, that would name the Arkansaurus fridayi the state dinosaur.

In hindsight, it might have been a mistake for Democrats to stack the House Revenue and Taxation Committee before the session. In November, they sacrificed every other committee and managed to obtain an 11-9 majority there before Republicans could get organized to stop it. But a few weeks later, Rep. Joe Jett of Success switched parties and became a Republican, making it 10-10, and then he was named chairman of that committee.

The Democrats’ move was a bit combative for a party that’s outnumbered three to one, and it may have made it a little harder for its members to get anything done. Individually, they might would have been better off just exercising influence where they could.

All of this could change as the Legislature considers controversial bills and as everyone’s patience begins to fray. In the past, Republicans have split over the private option, the program that uses federal dollars to purchase private health insurance. A big fight on that issue does not appear to be looming.

However, other issues will pit competing conservative values against each other, causing Republicans to split and allowing Democrats at least to vote with the majority on a big issue. For example, medical marijuana is already splitting Republicans, with some saying the party must honor the November vote of the people while others argue that federal law is being violated and therefore so is the Constitution they took an oath to protect.

Another bill that’s splitting Republicans is House Bill 1035, the Arkansas Healthy Food Improvement Act, by Rep. Mary Bentley, R-Perryville. It would prohibit government food program beneficiaries from using their cards to purchase unhealthy food. It passed the House, but not by much, 55-39. Democrats are against it. Some Republican supporters say welfare recipients should not be using taxpayer dollars to buy soda pop and candy. Republican opponents, however, say it’s an expensive mandate on private business (Walmart is against it) that lets bureaucrats tell people what they should eat. We’ll see what happens in the Senate.

Theoretically, House Bill 1249 by Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville, is another one of those bills. It requires college campuses to allow their staff members to carry concealed weapons if they have a permit, regardless of what the campuses think is best – and none think it is best. Collins freely admits the issue puts two conservative principles in conflict, security versus local control. But the legislation is pro-gun and supported by the National Rifle Association, which is a powerful tiebreaker. It’ll pass.

Inevitably, there will be issues that split 102 Republicans, and when that happens, the 33 Democrats will have a chance to be on the winning side and, on rare occasions, actually be the swing vote. So while the Arkansaurus fridayi may soon be the state dinosaur, Democrats won’t become extinct.

Steve Brawner is an independent journalist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.

Can we trust the Constitution to fix itself?

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Sometimes, Americans these days can be so distrustful that systemic change can occur – even if they would like that change – that they won’t take advantage of a mechanism that would make it possible to at least try.

I’m referring to a vote Monday by the Arkansas Senate against a resolution calling for a Convention of States. That’s a national movement to gather delegates to consider constitutional amendments that would limit the federal government, impose budget restraints and enact term limits.

Those are the kinds of things Republicans often say they support, particularly the limiting government part. Several states have already signed on. In Arkansas, it failed Monday, 13-17, with eight Republicans voting no and four senators not voting. The vote was expunged, which means it can be reconsidered later, but it probably won’t be.

The Constitution’s Article V contains two mechanisms for amending the Constitution – one initiated by Congress, which is how all 27 amendments have been ratified, and one initiated by the states, which has never been used successfully.

In presenting the resolution, the sponsor, Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch, imagined a conversation he might have with Founding Father James Madison about the government’s current size and scope and about the $20 trillion national debt. Stubblefield wondered if Madison would even know what a trillion is – as if any of us do.

But the whole idea stalled amongst questions from both Republicans and Democrats about how the process would work, which Stubblefield couldn’t answer with specificity. Of course he couldn’t – it’s never been used before. The process would work like everything is supposed to work in this country: The Constitution lays out a broad framework, and then we have to figure out the details as we go along.

This is one of those issues that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention from the press but has gotten a lot of attention from a small number of activists from both sides. Many of the opponents are conservatives who fear a “runaway convention” where delegates suddenly start radically changing America and stripping us of our rights.

But any amendment must negotiate a gauntlet of constitutional roadblocks. Thirty-four states must approve a resolution, which would lead Congress to call a convention, which would require each state to select a delegation, who then would gather to vote on proposed amendments, which then would have to be approved by 38 state legislatures.

Thirty-eight states couldn’t agree on what kind of pizza to order, so it’s highly unlikely that anything crazy would get through.

The Article V provision, in fact, is consistent with the rest of the Constitution, which purposely makes it hard to get anything done. It was placed in the Constitution deliberately because the Founders knew that, sometimes, problems created by elected officials in Washington would have to be solved from the outside and then forced upon them. As examples, Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Conway, a supporter, pointed out that Article V had been used to pass the Bill of Rights, end slavery, and give women the right to vote. The only difference was that the process had started with Congress each time, and this time, the states would do it.

Clearly, 21 senators didn’t feel that way. If it’s because they didn’t agree with the Convention of States’ goals, then that’s understandable, even laudable, because if you don’t want to reduce government or pass a balanced budget amendment or enact term limits, you shouldn’t vote for a convention that would consider those things.

However, some of those no voters want those things to happen, and a constitutional amendment may be the only way. After 200-plus years of doing otherwise, lawmakers in Washington are not going to suddenly limit their power or balance the budget consistently, regardless of whether the president is named “Obama” or “Trump.”

The Founding Fathers created a mechanism in the Constitution to address problems that aren’t being solved through the other mechanisms we’re accustomed to using. A states-led convention to accomplish what you say you want to accomplish isn’t messing with the Constitution. It’s using it as it was intended.

What some of the senators who voted no were saying is that they don’t trust the Constitution’s own mechanisms for fixing itself, which means that, to balance the federal budget, for example, we’re going to have to use its other mechanisms that haven’t worked in the past.

Fine. The national debt is $20 trillion, and rising. Which one should we give another try?

Out of the shadows

DACABy Steve Brawner

On Jan. 21, Ana Aguayo stood on the steps of the State Capitol and admitted – proclaimed, you might say – before thousands of people including police officers that she was committing a crime.

Ana, 28, is an undocumented immigrant, so her crime is not crossing the border to return to a homeland that hasn’t been home for a very long time. At the age of 8, she was bought by her parents from Guadalajara to Springdale, where she was raised knowing nothing of her status. Her teachers taught her English and helped her integrate into the community, and by the age of 16 she was pretty much an American girl.

That’s when she found out she wasn’t. When her peers started getting driver’s licenses and jobs, she learned she wasn’t like them, that she was an unacknowledged guest and not part of the family. And it changed her childhood.

“I grew up living in fear and in the shadows and at a time where the media identified myself as a criminal, when I didn’t understand what had happened, that my parents crossed the border unbeknownst to me,” she said in an interview. Continue reading →

He was playing chess; she was playing checkers

By Steve Brawner
© 2017 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Donald Trump won the Republican Party nomination because he was playing checkers while the other candidates were playing chess, and it was a checkers year. In November, the opposite happened: He checkmated Hillary Clinton while she was playing checkers.

Remember the primaries? Those 16 other mostly conventional Republican candidates were all playing chess – trying to execute their grand strategies and position themselves for Trump’s inevitable fade, or to be the last person standing against him. While they were staring at the chessboard, he just kept bouncing from state to state on the checkerboard until he reached the back row and shouted, “King me!”

In the general election, however, it was Clinton who tried to play checkers, while Trump realized it had become a chess match.

Checkers is a simple game, which is why we don’t hear much about “checkers masters.” The strategy involves a balance of offense and defense: You try to reach the opponent’s back row without allowing them to reach yours. If you play too aggressively, you leave yourself open, so it’s best just to plod along, pick up pieces and look for the double jumps.

That’s what Clinton did. Once she had that small lead in the polls, she played it safe and ran a same-old, same-old campaign. She didn’t reach out to voters who ordinarily wouldn’t support Democrats; those were discarded into her “basket of deplorables” and forgotten about. She thought her back row was protected by that supposed “blue wall” of states like Michigan and Pennsylvania that of course would vote for the Democrat because they always had. When that old Trump video where he talked about grabbing women surfaced, she thought she’d made a double jump right onto his back row.

Trump, meanwhile, was playing chess. Chess is an offensive game where you win by taking the opponent’s king regardless of what it costs you, and often by surprising the opponent. With checkers, you always know who’s winning; with chess, the player with fewer pieces can suddenly strike and end the game. So while Clinton’s campaign (and most pundits) were counting the number of checkers left on the board, Trump’s campaign found some holes in that blue wall and exploited them.

Meanwhile, Trump did what Clinton refused to do or could not do – find new voters.

The modern Republican Party has been an awkward coalition of business elites and socially conservative regular Americans whose interests sometimes conflict, particularly lately when those business elites are getting really rich while many regular Americans are struggling.

Trump saw that there are a lot more regular Americans than there are business elites, and some who typically vote for Democrats could become his voters. He could speak to them in a way that Mitt Romney couldn’t in 2012 because Trump is blunt and earthy and understands popular culture, and because Clinton, the daughter of a middle class Chicago small businessman, had become one of those elites herself. He wasn’t going to lose the regular Americans he already had, and he didn’t need the elites’ money because he’s already rich, he was getting so much free air time, and he’s a wizard at using free social media.

He realized that he could appeal to regular Americans’ legitimate fears and concerns – and, for some, to their misplaced grievances and their unacknowledged prejudices – by using the most effective and darkest campaign slogan in recent American history. A lot’s implied in “Make America Great Again,” especially that last word, “again,” as in, “It used to be great, but it’s not now, and here are the groups of people responsible for that.”

In the end, Clinton had 3 million more votes across the country, but Trump won the states that mattered most. Her checkerboard had more pieces, and so did her chessboard, but the checkers game didn’t matter, and he had surrounded her king with a bunch of pawns.

He recognized what no other candidates saw this election except perhaps Sen. Bernie Sanders – that the game was different this time. In fact, both games were, and the trick was knowing when to play which. That’s why the Republicans who were playing chess had to king him in checkers. That’s why he captured Clinton’s king in the general election chess match while she was moving her checkers around the board. And that’s why he’s the nation’s 45th president, and they’re not.

Related: Trump played checkers and they played chess – in a checkers year

2016 wasn’t so bad

By Steve Brawner
© 2016 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

More than a few people are expressing their hopes for a happy new year by saying good riddance to the old – the basis being that they aren’t happy with the presidential election, along with the fact that a lot of famous people died in 2016, especially lately.

The truth is that famous people die every year, and it’s not the year’s fault. Also, whatever you think about the election, the good news is that we had one.

Consider that on March 1, almost 632,000 Arkansans went to the polls to help select the two major party candidates. Then in November, about 1.13 million Arkansans voted in the general election for one of those two candidates or for one of six others. In January, the current president will peacefully hand the Oval Office’s keys to his successor and become a private citizen, while the new president takes the reins of power only temporarily.

This process is fairly common around the world these days but rare throughout history, when power has often been transferred through war or intrigue or birthright. George Washington came along and just gave power up. As flawed as it was, the 2016 presidential election was a blessing, not a curse, when you consider many of the possible alternatives. As Winston Churchill once said, “Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

In fact, the 2016 campaign in some ways was remarkably open and democratic. The Republicans offered 17 candidates for president, each of whom had ample opportunities to make their case to the voters. Donald Trump won in part because he inspired first-time or infrequent voters to go to the polls. The Democrats offered the first female major party nominee, and her gender was not the defining issue. Third party candidates were treated, at least for a time, as candidates, not asterisks.

The campaign gave a shot of adrenaline to a political process that has grown predictable and stale. This time, the usual left-versus-right narrative simply didn’t apply. Both Trump and Bernie Sanders gave voice to legitimate concerns about global trade and the unevenness of the economic recovery. Moreover, they made their cases largely through oratory and direct communication rather than formulaic 30-second television advertising, which has been the norm. In November, the candidate who raised a lot less money and ran far fewer ads won by using tools that are at least theoretically available to others: a message that drew crowds and media attention, and social media.

Here’s where some of you say, “But Trump …”

I know, and I share many of your concerns. I voted for John Kasich in the Republican primary and the independent Evan McMullin in November – two candidates I believed offered positive, unifying visions. But, for one column, let’s look on the bright side, or at least all sides. It’s wrong to look at the world through rose-colored glasses, but it’s also a mistake to reach for the gray ones instead. In fact, it’s worse.

It wasn’t just in national politics where 2016 wasn’t so bad. In Arkansas, the Legislature met three times and along with Gov. Hutchinson produced tangible results in health care and highway funding. The unemployment rate in Arkansas is about 4 percent, which is far below the national average. Granted, that’s partly a result of the high number of former workers who have dropped out of the labor force, but clearly things are better than they were.

The Charles Dickens novel, “A Tale of Two Cities” begins with the words, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Based on the way so many people talk these days – and have been for the past decade or two – you’d think these are just the worst of times. Let’s be realists, not cynics. By many measurements, Americans live better than 99 percent of all people who have ever lived.

So may we each have a happy new year while keeping the right perspective on the old one. Maybe it wasn’t the best of times, but the times certainly weren’t the worst.