On political civility, partisanship and good will.

Editor's Note

We are very honored to welcome Dr. Bill Roy to this posting of the ever cantakerous Flyer!

While we like "letting the feathers fly" here is one of our state's most important Sages and are absolutely delighted to study and publish his words. I cannot tell you how good it is to have this very important voice crowing from this corner of the barnyard with us.

Flyer readers can read a very interesting and informative interview from the PBS award winning show Frontline with Dr. Bill Roy where he describes his famous 1973-4 campaign against Sen. Bob Dole and the ugliness Roy endured. We sometimes moan of our predicaments, but when I read that he said, "if you wrestle with a dog you're going to get muddy."

Well, that just settled me down enough to smile and read of someone who has been down that hard gravel road before me.

Check out where Dr. Roy comes from; click the title line above for a backgrounder, about some real knock down, drag'em out Kansas politics. Then read below of what he's got to say about today's fuss in high offices. - Michael Caddell

Who can be "meaner than West Texas rattlesnakes?"

And there it rests.

by Dr. Bill Roy,

Congressman (Ks. 2nd district, 1971 - 75)

One question I hear again and again, most often by sincere but disillusioned Republican businessmen, is what are the sources of the lack of civility and cooperation among members of Congress. And what can be done about it? The first question is easily answered; the second is far more difficult.

While there were antecedents in the Republican party such as when conservatives booed Nelson Rockefeller at the 1964 conventions, and in the Democratic party with the ugly split over the Vietnam War, the inter-party nastiness really took off in the 1980s.

Newt Gingrich made it to Congress on his third try in 1979, and once there decided Republicans were never going to gain a majority by being nice to Democrats in return for a few legislative crumbs. He quickly took over Gopac, the party political action committee designed to recruit and train new candidates.

By the mid-80s Gopac was not only providing money and training candidates and staffs, they were teaching them how to “talk like Gingrich,” which meant calling Democratic incumbents out of touch, elitists, mean-spirited, and arrogant, among other adjectives.

Republicans still were not winning that many House seats, but they caught a break in 1987 when the FCC rescinded the “fairness doctrine” which provided equal time on radio or television for the begrieved party to answer charges and return fire.

The door for talk radio was opened and through it walked Rush Limbaugh and hundreds of imitators who called Democrats practically anything they wanted to call them--dumb, corrupt, haters (of Reagan or whomever) and supporters of communism and socialism--not just unpatriotic, but traitors.

Democrats got mad, but they didn’t get even. In fact they sloppily wrote checks against future salary deposits (so did Gingrich) at the House bank and misused House post office funds.

Speaker Jim Wright was forced by Gingrich to retire when it was alleged he was using mass purchases of a book he authored to line his own pockets--interestingly enough a ploy that came back to haunt Gingrich.

Republican aggression against Democrats finally paid off with the election of a Republican House in 1994. It had taken not only the battering of the 80s, but also a failed health care proposal and votes to raise taxes brought about by President Bill Clinton.

Concurrent with steps one and two--Gingrich-talk and the end of the protection of the fairness doctrine-- was the arrival of evangelical Christians in the Republican party. The doors were opened with Roe v. Wade and legions of people crowded through. The movement became more potent when Jerry Falwell organized the Moral Majority in 1980 to support the election of Ronald Reagan and as many compliant Republicans as possible.

Evangelicals deal with religious issues, which means they refuse to compromise, eliminating the very essence of legislative decision-making. Some evangelicals were elected, but many more Republicans paid homage to their issues, even if they did little about them.

Bottom line: many religious folks can be meaner than West Texas rattlesnakes when they don’t get what they believe is God’s way. Massive incivility, lack of cooperation and hate were ignited.

Came 1995-2007 when majority House Republicans radically revised the legislative process by substituting traditional authorizing committees with special committees and shoulder to shoulder consultations with lobbyists, locking Democrats out of critical conference committees, keeping votes open until they could bribe or brow-beat enough members into voting their way, and distributing some $40 billion in 2006 alone by earmarked appropriations.

Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom Delay (all now self-immolated) ran a tight ship supporting a far-right theocratic agenda that was mostly foiled by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate.

Democrats fought back and over two and a half decades and became--as inevitably happens--more like their adversaries. Collegiality, comity, cooperation, just old-fashioned courtesy simply went out the window. And there it rests.

There is no way to run backwards the reel of history and eradicate the truly bad blood accumulated over 25 years. It’ll take a lot of work and good will to return the House to a civil, functioning democratic body.