My first impulse, when I received the post-election email from Congressman Stewart Jones, proclaiming that “FREEDOM IS COMING!” now that South Carolina had rejected the “democratic socialist” attempt to take control, it was to roll its eyes. Freedom is arriving? To South Carolina?
My second impulse – reading your prediction that with 81 Republicans in the 124-member House and 30 in the 46-member Senate “we should be able to pass the Heartbeat Bill, Constitutional Loading, continue to cut red tape in small businesses, cut taxes and defend our history in the next session ”- it was thinking about the last time a party had such overwhelming control in South Carolina.
This was actually before my time. When I moved here, Republican Carroll Campbell was about to take office as governor. But Democrats had even greater majorities in the legislature than Republicans today: 91 in the House and 34 in the Senate. What I really thought about was the time just before and after the Republicans won their important seat in the 42nd House, which gave them enough votes to support Campbell’s vetoes if they voted together. What they always did. And what Democrats practically never did, except when everyone, in both parties, did.
Cindi Ross Scoppe
And that was the point: the Democrats had completely controlled South Carolina since the end of Reconstruction – I once read a book about South Carolina entitled “The primary state,” which explained that the November election was, from 1896 to 1962, a mere formality – that party cohesion was simply not a concept that most of them recognized.
The first Republicans elected to the Legislature did nothing to discourage anti-partyism, because they realized – as smart Democrats in the 21st century do – that the only way to achieve anything was by joining members of the other party.
As the state became Republican, Republican Party members switched to very rigid party cohesion, which made sense when they were approaching and won the majority for the first time, but it continued for almost three decades, making it a home overwhelmingly more unified republican than the overwhelmingly democratic one has ever been.
But the mathematical fact is that the more people you have sat around the table, the more difficult it will be to agree on everything. And the important corollary is that the greater the majority, the less important it is that everyone agrees on everything.
Having 81 Republicans means that House leaders can lose up to 18 votes and still approve their priorities in education, spending, law enforcement, energy and everything that matters. Which means they don’t have to worry so much about pleasing everyone in their caucus. (The most libertarian Republicans say their traditional colleagues have always ignored their cultural war priorities; this is the emotional center of Jones’ “LIBERTY!” Email.)
Conventional wisdom supports Jones’ prediction: More Republicans will mean more far-right laws. The legislature will finally pass a law on fetal heartbeat that taxpayers will have to spend millions in defense in court, instead of allowing other states to be the test cases. He will ignore the objections of our law enforcement leaders and buy the internally inconsistent argument that he has to pass a law allowing everyone to carry any weapon they want anywhere (except at the Statehouse, of course), because the US Constitution demands it. Or pass other bills that mark cultural war boxes, but do nothing to ensure that children receive the kind of education we need to attract the economic growth that will allow our state to prosper.
And it can be.
But you don’t have to.
The House has long approved abortion projects that are currently unconstitutional and weapons projects that are contested by police officers that they normally venerate and tax cuts that we cannot afford. Many Republicans knew better, but they knew that the bills would die in the Senate, a special place with their own special customs – which show no loyalty to the party, except when they do – that let a single senator derail all but the most urgent bills.
I’m not about to guess how the Senate will change with a larger and more conservative majority in the Republican Party, but it could certainly stop killing the more radical bills passed by the House. And everyone knows that.
Imagine what would happen if the House Republicans decided to take advantage of their extra room for maneuver and move away from the party mentality that forces them to serve their less compromising members.
I would never suggest that the world was wonderful when Democrats controlled the House. But its overwhelming number meant that Democratic leaders could ignore the crazy ideas coming from their left flank. It also meant that, instead of seeing everything through party lenses, they could be pragmatic.
The most dramatic example of this came when Governor Campbell revealed his bold proposal to reform the state government, to give himself and future governors control over many state agencies that until then were not responsible for absolutely anyone.
House leaders could have assessed this in partisan terms, as an issue characteristic of the man who spent much of his eight years in office making his party supplant theirs, and they could easily have killed him. Instead, they saw what it really was: a first step in removing 19th century South Carolina. And they spearheaded the process of turning Campbell’s most important initiative into law. And our state continues to reap the benefits a quarter of a century later.
Cindi Ross Scoppe is a writer for The Post and Courier. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Facebook or Twitter @cindiscoppe.