Pushed off the grandstand

Extremist grandstanders are for racket, not policy, an established truth that modern-day Arkansas seemed to have forgotten until Thursday.

Alas, the remembering happened in an isolated circumstance. Policy by extremist grandstanders was merely deferred, not defeated.

But at least a small blow for practical governance was struck. Long may it echo through state Capitol corridors.

State Sen. Jason Rapert, speaking of an extremist grandstander, stood at the completion of the agenda at the special legislative session—the one to cut rich people’s taxes quite a bit and other people’s some—and sought a two-thirds vote to extend the session for 15 days, practically until Rudolph begins leading Santa through the night sky.

Rapert intended to bring up a bill imposing a legally dubious anti-abortion scheme borrowed from Texas. It was overkill. The U.S. Supreme Court will handle abortion soon enough on a Mississippi case. But Rapert’s Republican primary for lieutenant governor precedes that. You see.

If successful, Rapert’s motion for an extension also would have allowed

Sen. Trent Garner and other extremists to bring up their gem of a bill saying school teachers couldn’t impart any divisive concepts like historical facts.

For that matter, any and all legislators could have filed bills of any nature. We’d have had a 15-day freefor-all, decking the Capitol halls with boughs of hooey.

Jimmy Hickey, the Senate president pro tem, is plenty conservative, but not nuts. He snookered Rapert into his motion, at which point he made a substitute motion for his resolution to adjourn the special session sine die, meaning right now and forever and forever, amen.

Rapert complained mightily, but parliamentary procedure was clear that the substitute proposal had to be dispensed with first. You deal with the substitute motion, then proceed to the main motion. Everybody, even the presiding lieutenant governor, Tim Griffin, knew that.

But the substitute, needing only a majority, got 23 of the Senate’s 35 votes. The 11 votes against came nowhere even near the ballpark of twothirds. Rapert was thus spanked pretty soundly.

In advancing adjournment, Hickey didn’t state any opposition to pro-life or anti-history legislation. He stressed instead the folly and general peril to sound governance of an inessential free-for-all.

He also got fiscal about it. He reminded senators that a 15-day extension would require an additional appropriation of taxpayer money that would require a threefourths majority and for which he personally would not vote.

That’s one of the ways of grandstanding extremists: They’ll cut the treasury in the morning and try to spend more of it for their play-pretties in the afternoon.

Rapert was left only to say he regretted that his colleagues had voted against saving babies and otherwise to retreat to his natural habitat where he thrives—to self-righteous martyrdom via microphones, cameras, pulpits and social media.

History teachers could breathe a sigh of relief. For now, they may still say in classrooms that there once was an American Civil War.

Hickey told me in a phone conversation after adjournment that he’d have gladly gone along with keeping the Senate in session until Christmas had there been a pressing need with a legitimate solution. But he said nobody need doubt that the state Senate is predominantly pro-life. Trying to make Arkansas law of the latest and dubious ploy from Texas has nothing to do with that, he said.

As for the education bill, so-called “critical race theory,” Hickey told me he’d have to read it when the time comes, but it might be that he and I would see that one differently. But last week, he said, was not the time for that either.

So, it all ended with a culture-war whimper and the thud of bags of tax money landing in deep pockets.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson was buoyant. He’s had a bad couple of years in legislative relations and effectiveness with his theme that needlessly divisive legislation is … well … needless.

But he was able to say at the close of the special session Thursday that he had passed a seminal income-tax cut and managed in partnership with Hickey and House Speaker Matthew Shepherd to keep the extremist grandstanders at bay on needless or ill-conceived agenda add-ons.

We’re not out of the grandstanding extremist woods in Arkansas as yet. We’ll have a fiscal session in February, and legislative leaders already are thinking they may need to suspend rules then to take up a few essential non-fiscal matters.

If that happens, grandstanding extremists would surely leap.

But let’s be thankful for the moment. Sensible lawmaking has come home, if only for Christmas. John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.