One Big Shoulder Shrug
It’s one of the best moments of the Utah Legislature — that interview when GOP leaders offer their rationale for allowing so many morality-laced message bills to clog up Capitol Hill’s system.
Today it comes from House Speaker Greg Curtis, in a Salt Lake Tribune story by Rebecca Walsh. Of bills that ban abortion, open the gates for unfettered religious expression in public schools and regulate gay clubs in high schools, Curtis says:
“They generally come around every session. Legislating is all about morality. We represent the people. Some of the representatives are more aggressive than others in doing that. Some legislators want to push the envelope on court rulings.”
First of all, Curtis is a lawyer — though his specialty lies in using his political influence for squeezing municipal zoning rules to allow sprawling development along the Wasatch Front. Senate President John Valentine also is an attorney.
Curtis may not know the fine points of constitutional law, but a whole stack of eager lawyers on the Hill can help him out. Republican Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has testified, for instance, to the constitutional shakiness of several message bills.
Second, the speaker and senate president, along with their majority leaders and whips, wield control over which bills move through the committee and floor process. They oversee their party caucuses, where presumably, serious arm wrestling occurs in weeding out bills for the 45-day session.
One theory for leaders allowing their party’s rubes and goofballs to run amok with morality bills is the cover it provides for the real agenda. So far, that would include the well-financed-from-outside school voucher bill, which is fast-tracking its way to the state Senate and then to the guv’s desk for his anticipated signature.
Does anyone think for a minute that as Sen. Chris Buttars blathered on about kids who can’t wear CTR shirts to school, and Orem freshman Rep. Stephen Sandstrom pulled out dusty Ronald Reagan quotes in defending a draconian anti-abortion bill, that other more “go-to” guys like Rep. Steve Urquhart and Sen. Curt Bramble weren’t doing the GOP’s serious heavy lifting?
(Bramble is the brains behind a bill to make school board races partisan. He says it’s only because he wants more citizen interest and involvement in those historically dull elections. The truth is, he wants the well-organized and powerful right wing of his party to control those races at the caucus level, thus ensuring ultra-conservative school boards and yet another Republican power base in Utah politics.)
In my fantasy world, legislative leaders would come clean at least a teeny-weeny bit and admit that this is how their game gets played. So much of it revolves around diverting constituent and media attention from the real — and very unsexy — business on the hill.
It’s just one big shrug of the shoulders, one big “sorry, it’s not my problem.” And then we all go on.
February 4th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Dean Acheson described the repubs of the McMarthy era as “primitives”. Wonder how he would feel about Utah`s legislature.
February 4th, 2007 at 10:06 am
McCarthy..too early to type
February 4th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Each year I become more disgusted with the posturing, not legislating, but posturing on the hill. Legislating is absolutely not about morality; it is about solving public policy issues. I have written almost daily messages to my particular legislators. “Thanks for you comments,” they say and that’s it. They are Democrats like myself, but I have a spine and apparently they don’t. This session no real problems have been addressed and one, public education, has been sidelined by this ridicuous voucher issue. Chris Buttars, among others, should be impeached. Now I read that the real problem of payday lending will not even be discussed. What is going on up there besides lobbyists calling in favors?
February 5th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Cheer up, folks. By not recognizing that Utah’s demographics are changing at a phenomenal rate, the Rs are sowing the seeds of their own demise.
Here are the four demographic trends in Utah that are going to doom them if they don’t adjust:
(1) A shrinking Mormon majority (The Rs have lived by the Mormons-have-to-vote-Republican sword, and they’ll die by it if they don’t watch out),
(2) An increasingly urban population (quick, name one major urban area in the U.S. that tends to vote R), and
(3) An increasingly Latino population (will tend to vote Dem, all things being equal).
(4) An increasingly homosexual-tolerant population (I’ve really seen a big change in this respect in my college students. Kids today are simply used to the idea of homosexuals living normal lives and being like everyone else. In ten years, it’ll be hard to trot these folks out as boogie - bogie? men/women).
In short, the Utah Republican party is going to have to become much more moderate (that is, it will have to become much more attuned to the needs of the average Utahn) if it wants to survive. I expect that we’ll start seeing their grip on Utah politics begin to weaken substantially very soon. I noticed in Rolly’s column in this morning’s Trib that The Eagle Forum’s presence in the legislature is already beginning to wane a bit, for example.
February 5th, 2007 at 8:48 pm
This legislature always tries to send a message to the “feds”. GSA clubs, the woman’s right to choose, religion in schools, hidden government regulation in people’s private lives, there are all too predictable. This legislature doesn’t give us anything new, and anything where they support the opinion of the people on polls. Utah and its majority is ‘Queer’ to the nation; they have to stop being afraid of post-modernism.
February 6th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Damn! It’s bogy! Bogy Men!
February 7th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
I wonder when Senator Chris Butters and his friends at the Eagle Forum are going to figure out that by constantly trying to drive homosexuals back into the closet they are only promoting the very thing they are trying to avoid.
Everytime they bring up the issue, more Gays and their families seem to be willing to discuss their feelings and more of the population becomes sympathetic to them.
Before Our Gang Comedy up at the legislature first tried to ban Gay Clubs, nobody really discussed the issue. Now even Provo High School has a Gay/Straight Alliance.
I remember ten years ago talking to one of my college students who was having some emotional issues and he blurted out that he was gay. Over and over he begged me not to tell anyone. Today I have same sex couples coming to class holding hands and even the LDS kids don’t seem to blink an eye.
My guess is that if they keep up their annual crusade that even Utah will start accepting Gay Marriage.