House Republican Caucus Leader Larry Taylor is not, repeat not, calling Democrats “kidnappers and terrorists.” He is, however, quite happy to compare them to spoiled kids.
After House Democratic Caucus Chair Jim Dunnam put the blame for the impasse on Republican resistance to tackling anything except voter ID first, Taylor launched a rebuttal. While accepting that what the Dems are asking for is legal within the rules, Taylor’s rhetoric took an interesting turn.
“Basically,” he said, “what they keep coming to us with the offer of,’If you meet our demands, we’ll be nice and go back to normal.’ You can’t deal with that kind of situation. You don’t deal with kidnappers and terrorists, because once you do that, you’re open to having that over and over and over again. Now I’m not saying, be very clear, that they’re terrorists and kidnappers, but I’m saying in the same vein that if we give in to their demands this go around, we’re going to have to go through this every time there’s an issue they don’t want to talk about.”
Instead, since they weren’t prepared to accept taking the calendar as it stands (even though the Senate does that every day), Taylor compared the Democrats to “whiny kids” and accused them of “throwing a hissy fit.”
“Mr. Dunnam is asking the speaker to make a ruling on a potential point of order, which we never do,” said Taylor (by “we” he meant the House, but there was general wondering why he and not Straus was holding this presser, especially since the speaker’s press secretary Angela Hale was present.)
On the more substantive issue of voter ID being dead, “According to the Democratic Party it is,” he said. He was circumspect about the proposals in Senate Bill 362 passing. “What’s voter ID?” he said. If it came up now, he said, there would still be plenty of time for amendments. “I can’t tell you what the final bill looks like until we get there.”
This article appears in May 22 • 2009.
