It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the recent announcement that Congress’ Freedom Caucus is establishing an affiliate in the Oklahoma Legislature.
Why laugh? Because the lawmakers who unveiled the new operation are among the state’s headline-grabbingest, yet least productive. Republicans so far right their annual public policy proposals rarely gain traction with an uber-conservative GOP supermajority.
Why cry? Because it came just a week after the Freedom Caucus-style candidates scored victories in pathetically low turnout Republican runoffs, increasing their statehouse numbers to levels destined to give incoming leadership heartburn, if not migraines.
It would be hilarious to watch the likes of Sens. Shane Jett and Dusty Deevers and Reps. Jim Olsen and Dana Prieto rail about the RINOs [Republicans In Name Only] in their caucuses were it not so out of touch with reality.
The truth is, Oklahoma’s Legislature already is nationally regarded as among the Top 10, if not Top Two, most conservative. Any shift further to the right would usher in the very thing the Freedom Caucus claims to oppose: more government control, less individual liberty.
To be sure, it’s not clear the Freedom Caucus has a GOP caucus majority in either the state House or Senate. But each time a more rational Republican, like House Appropriations Chair Kevin Wallace, gets defeated – as he was in the Aug. 27 runoff – the trickier life will be for incoming House Speaker Kyle Hilbert and Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton.
And the less likely the Oklahoma Legislature will be able to generate the consensuses necessary to solve the state’s most pressing problems.
Think of it this way: if you like what you see from Washington gridlock, you’ll love what you get from a statehouse loaded with the publicity hounds that populate the Freedom Caucus.
Even without a majority in either chamber’s GOP caucus, the potential for Freedom Caucusers to gum up serious legislating cannot be overstated. After all, legislatures were not built for my-way-or-the-highway rigidity. To find real, meaningful solutions requires conversation, negotiation and – gasp! – compromise. Something for which DC’s Freedom Caucus has shown little regard or understanding.
There is a sure-fire way to neutralize the zealots and get The People’s work done: For Hilbert, Paxton and reality-based Republicans lawmakers to band together with statehouse Democrats to solve real problems involving, for example, education, health care and highways.
But one of the best ways to get good-hearted, clear-eyed Oklahomans engaged in the political process again is to demonstrate government can work to solve real problems. Such potential voters vastly outnumber the ideologues who are currently the GOP primary deciders.
A first step would require Hilbert abandon outgoing Speaker Charles McCall’s demand that at least 51 Republicans support a measure before it can be advanced. That standard could be eclipsed easily with a coalition of Republicans [uber-conservative, to be sure, but relatively sane] and the House’s 20 Democrats [who, by the way, happen to represent 800,000-plus Sooners].
A pipe dream? Probably. But it’s a reasonable, responsible answer to the threat posed by the state’s fledgling Freedumb Caucus.
