Party membership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — and that’s a good thing

Cleaning out my IN box today, I ran across this from four days ago:

Senators Say They Will return to Columbia on Tuesday

COLUMBIA – South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler today released a list of Senators who have requested it be made public that they will return to Columbia on Tuesday June 7th ready to conduct business per Governor Haley’s Executive Order.?

“We have enjoyed many successes with the Governor Haley this year. Now that the Governor has called the General Assembly back, it’s important we finish the job on these critical government restructuring reforms.”

Senator Harvey Peeler

Senator Lee Bright

Senator Kevin Bryant

Senator Ronnie Cromer

Senator John Courson

Senator Tom Davis

Senator Mike Rose

Senator Greg Gregory

Senator Greg Ryberg

Senator David Thomas

**Senator Shane Martin supports the effort to return to Columbia on Tuesday, but will be unable to attend due to scheduling conflicts.

*Some Senators were unable to be reached this afternoon.

###

Interesting, huh? Especially in light of what happened. Here’s something that’s even more interesting, given my jaded view of political parties…

That release was sent out by Wesley Donehue, in his capacity working for the Senate Republicans. He also, under the same auspices, sent out the releases from Glenn McConnell challenging the governor for violating the separation of powers. Now that’s cool. Wesley’s doing his job. But the point I want everyone to note is this:

Being a Republican, or a Democrat, means next to nothing. They are false associations, mere granfalloons. When a theoretically coherent organization such as the Senate Republicans are putting out statements taking such different positions on an issue, it makes this fact clear. (You will occasionally see reportage that notes that the Republican governor is at odds with the Republican legislative leadership, in a tone that suggests there is something ironic about it. There is not. Nor is it strange or ironic for GOP senators to take different paths.)

This is not a bad thing; it’s a good thing. Senators SHOULD be thinking for themselves, and taking their own positions individually, rather than marching in lockstep. I just wanted everyone to notice it.

Oh, one last point — someone with the caucus may argue that being willing to come back as the governor requested is not entirely inconsistent with being opposed to the way the governor went about trying to make it happen. That’s true. The world is NOT black/white, either/or, liberal/conservative, the way parties would have you believe. Reality, and responsible governance, are far more complex than that.

4 thoughts on “Party membership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — and that’s a good thing”

  2. bud

    Cindy’s column today about I-73 was interesting. She had some salient points and she certainly is very knowledgeable and astute in what she does. However, Cindy, like Brad, is so hung up on this restructuring stuff she focused on a side issue, restructuring, while barely touching the real problem. Simply put, I-73 is a completely unnecessary waste of money that will do irreparable harm to the environment. However the SCDOT’s commission is structured wouldn’t really change the way roads are selected. They would still be chosen by legislative and/or gubernatorial meddling. Until we elect reasonable thinking leaders in this state we’ll always be discussing these issues. Restructuring cannot change that.

  3. Brad

    Joey Oppermann, ladies and gentlemen… Joey, if you’ll recall, ran Steve Benjamin’s successful campaign last year. Which, aside from being technically a nonpartisan election, actually drew some bipartisan support. The Quinns, for instance. And Nikki Haley attorney Butch Bowers (well, at least I saw Butch at the victory celebration).

    Which is very unParty, and very cool. The Benjamin campaign was about putting together people with REAL commonalities as citizens of Columbia (and the metro area — Steve intentionally reached out beyond the limits of those who could vote for him), rather than appealing merely to granfalloons.

  4. Brad

    In other words, he worked to bring together members of a broad karass — a granfalloon being, of course, a FALSE karass in Bokononism…

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