The House GOP fires its only shot over and over and over again

Posted at 5:16 PM on February 26, 2007 by Tom Scheck (2 Comments)

The Minnesota House has just entered hour six in a debate that no one is really paying attention to (except for the politicos who are taking note of the bad votes for 2008). The debate is over House rules. Don't get me wrong, it's important to set the rules for the body but there aren't too many people out there who understand the rules or care.

There have been 22 amendments offered on the House floor at this point. One was offered by a DFLer. The others by the GOP.

The House GOP has been weakened in the past election (49 votes if you include Mark Olson who was booted out of the GOP caucus) so they know they don't have the votes to defeat or change any policies. Their strategy may be to run a "four corners offense" with the hopes that the House doesn't look like it's doing anything. It will be interesting to see how DFL leaders handle the delay tactics as the clock ticks toward the end of session.

Comments (2)

Thank you for pointing this out, Tom. What a ghastly waste of time. This kind of silly partisan nonsense is part of the reason they lost control of the House in the first place.

Posted by Bill Prendergast | February 26, 2007 8:18 PM

This is part of the natural tedium of legislative manuevering, but nothing new or special.

The only thing worse than partisan bickering in legislatures is getting them all to quietly agree on something. Then you KNOW something wrong is going on. :-)

Honestly, most of what the Legislature does is of absolutely no interest to most people, and it should be that way. Usually people only notice when they really screw things up, or are grandstanding over an issue that doesn't really matter or they can't really do something about.

The day to day lawmaking and legislative battles are eminently ignorable, but necessary nonetheless. Ever watch croissants being made? It is an incredibly tedious process that takes days to get right, but most people only care about the results and whether they taste good (how do you like how I avoided the sausage analogy?).

Only insiders care whether legislators "get along" or "get their work done on time" or "bicker." And they care for the wrong reason--it is awful and tedious to endure.

That is how the process was designed, though. Contending forces; even minorities have power; terribly slow to get things done.

The Founders distrusted power, and made it difficult to weild. Thank God!

Posted by David Strom | February 26, 2007 11:34 PM

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