I am often reminded of an old Saturday NIght Live skit making fun of the short but fantabulously baroque reign of House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the late 1990s, riffing on the Republican “Contract of America.” The skit showed Gingrich running a caucus session and repeatedly slamming his gavel down the instant any GOP legislator proposed an entirely top-of-the-head, half-baked glimmer of a law. "Done! Next!" shouted the fictional but not far from reality Gingrich.
My, my. So very manly, masterful and decisive! And so was the entire GOP law-making crew. How could any entertainment-oriented media consumer not like it? Flash forward: Now, we have guys like Trump and Cruz promising the same approach, only in real life.
And so, even though the Trump/Cruz era is still young, we're closer to the script of the skit than when the real Gingrich regularly skirted protocol, though not quite so baldly.
The very worst real-world example of this politically conservative yet reckless approach to governing so far was in 2000, when the U.S. Supreme Court arbitrarily (and in a supposedly "one time only" precedent) prematurely halted the recount in Florida, thus awarding George W. Bush the presidency over Al Gore, the man who, it later turned out, had the majority of that state's votes and thus the majority of the Electoral College. The conservative majority's self-serving rationale: Actually counting all the votes could (gasp!) harm Bush!
But GOP insults to the orderly process of lawmaking and jurisprudence continue in many smaller ways.
A characteristic fetish of majority Republican lawmakers these days is to ram laws through in midnight votes with little debate. And then, when defects inevitably are found in those rough-hewn laws, and someone sues on civil liberties or other grounds, the same Republicans push to have the case jump-skipped through the normal, pain-staking court procedures.
Republicans and their conservative backers regularly seek to forego the appeals courts, urging higher courts they know to be friendly to take cases directly -- making a declarative ruling without pesky lower court readings and embarrassing precedents. Thus movement conservatism adds further velocity to its blitzkrieg of "now, yesterday" thinking, rushing to finality before anyone else can get their boots on, in their sweeping quest to deform long-existing laws and regulations.
Wisconsin Republicans did it when unions challenged Scott Walker's Act 10 union-busting law against public employees, asking the conservative state Supreme Court to usurp the case, upon which the court as usual rubber-stamped the GOP stance. The latest example, also from Wisconsin:
Attorney General Brad Schimel said Monday he would quickly seek to keep the state's so-called right-to-work law in place and may go directly to the state Supreme Court to do it... .
Unions sued and Dane County Circuit Judge C. William Foust ruled Friday that the law violates the state constitution's prohibition on taking property without fair compensation. The judge found the law interfered with the unions' ability to generate revenue from all the workers it protects... .
Ordinarily, the state would have to file in the lower courts, working on up through the state appeals court and finally, if no ruling by then had been to its liking, the big dogs on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, peopled right now by a 5-2 elected majority of right-wing injustices who have demonstrated that they’ve got the temperament to make Bush v. Gore look like, well, a tea party.
Just as they’ve done before, why should Wisconsin Republicans in Wisconsin have to go through all the tedious, prescribed steps to have their day in court, like commoners are made to do, when they can throw their weight around and simply cut to the chase?
Besides, the state Supreme Court is packed not only with a majority of GOP kindred spirits but even an ex-Republican state legislator. Hey, you know, it’s just so much more efficient. And, Republican needs are just so doggone pressing. Every time.
This has the effect of creating a two-tiered system of justice. Conservatives for themselves assert every last ounce of legal protection, as when individual Republicans in the U.S. Senate block scores of presidential nominations with so-called, never legally prescribed "holds." And as when businesses manage to derail the formulation of administrative rules to make functional the federal Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
That federal law, designed to address flaws that allowed a handful of Wall Street financial investment firms to drive the U.S. economy near to depression in 2008, was signed by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010. Yet, nearly six years later, only about half of the administrative regulations that would make the law fully functional have been issued, and many of those completed rules were watered down. That ponderously slow pace has been thanks to heavy lobbying by financial special interests and continuing Republican obstructionism.
So, short course: If you're a Republican, it's okay to cut corners, ignore procedure and ram laws and regulations through at warp speed and under cover of legislative darkness, grabbing more political power in order to do it while complaining mightily about too much government control.
But if you're anyone other than a Republican, just shut up and get in line. Wait your turn. Even if you’re the president of the United States, seeking a Republican-scheduled appointment hearing for your nominee to the Supreme Court.
And when you do get in line, you'll find the queue -- whether it's a rule-making hearing or your path to a ballot box --getting longer and longer. Helpfully and very quickly arranged by your nation's "loyal opposition" party.