JACKSON - My fellow columnist Sid Salter, in chastising House Democrats for complaining that partisanship is causing legislative deadlock, unintentionally, I'm sure, made the case of why the new party divide, stemming from the GOP's disciplined ranks, has spawned Capitol gridlock.
Sid suggests that since Republicans have discipline and Democrats don't that Democrats don't have cause to complain. And I believe he's suggesting Dems ought to match the GOP and get some discipline, too.
The old Will Rogers adage: "I don't belong to an organized political party, I'm a Democrat" is still at work here.
Democrats in the Legislature (or some who for convenience call themselves Democrats) are both unschooled and unskilled in anything like GOP party discipline that Haley Barbour has brought to Mississippi's statehouse.
A good case in point occurred in the 2000 session of the Legislature. Right at the close of the session, Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, trying to impose fiscal discipline, in one whack vetoed 45 appropriation bills passed by a decided majority of elected Democrats.
What happened? The Legislature, including a number who now are Republicans, promptly overrode his vetoes and went home. In the months that followed, when revenue collections fell short of lawmakers' estimates, Musgrove's attempt to trim spending to fit his revenue estimate proved correct.
But not a peep about "party discipline" was heard, certainly not from then-Democratic Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck who egged on the veto overrides.
Any suggestion now that two warring political camps would be good for making progress at the Legislature and helpful to improving the quality of life in this state is simply unrealistic.
This poor little, mostly rural state, still struggling with the remnants of poverty left from the Civil War and when ancestors of a great many black Mississippians were held in bondage, doesn't need to become a battleground between political ideologies.
True, Democrats overwhelmingly believe in several core principles, chief among them support for public education and health care for the poor. Now they're desperately trying to defend their ground against the executive power held by a Republican ideologue dedicated to shrinking government.
Why are increasing numbers of legislators and public officials being drawn to join the Republican ranks? It reminds me of what Willie Sutton said back in the 1920s when a reporter asked why he robbed banks.
"Because that's where the money is," Willie quickly replied.
It's a matter of fact that the GOP is where real money - the mother's milk for politicians - is. Naturally, as water runs downhill, there is where politicians will gravitate.
The Republicans, with their ready fund-raising sources in the business and corporate world, can dangle campaign cash in front of candidates to join the GOP faith when they are faced with election or re-election.
That was amply demonstrated in the recent special election for the rural House District 105 seat, when PAC money of BIPEC (Business-Industry Political Education Committee) and the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, both usual Republican givers, was put on known Republican and Barbour's choice, Paul Walley, a Richton lawyer.
But Paul Walley was upset by Leakesville schoolteacher Shaun Walley, who openly identified himself as a Democrat and for whose campaign some 60 House Democrats House chipped in money to hold the seat in their beleaguered ranks, something that has never happened before.
This underscores how the Barbour era has forged a new party line dynamic in the way the Legislature operates or, as perhaps many would say, does not operate.
Barbour's Republican predecessor in the 1990s, Kirk Fordice, didn't come close to enforcing, or trying to enforce, party discipline among Republicans in the Legislature.
Tuck, more than any lieutenant governor in my long memory of legislative affairs, is a mere puppet in the hands of Barbour.
Democrats have a 28-24 edge over Republicans in the Senate, but the Dems are toothless in mounting any sort of solid opposition.
Obviously, Tuck, who is term limited out of office in 2006 and has no job skills for open-market employment, is angling for some job well-heeled Republicans would provide her after she goes out of office. Or she might get some patronage post in the state from the Bush administration.
Another state elective office now doesn't seem to be in the cards for her.
