“Democrats have to fall in love while Republicans just fall in line.”
It spoke to the differences between the two parties’ cultures.
Democrats always seemed to be looking for the next great inspirational figure—FDR, JFK, Obama—to make them swoon. They saw politics as a process designed to lift their spirits.
For the Republicans, the process was more transactional.
With certain rare exceptions—Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump—they cared less about who sat at the head of the table than what was on the menu. In the old days, the fare mostly featured keeping taxes low and any government regulatory burdens even lower.
This meant that Democrats often marched into battle with all the precision of a group of toddlers at summer camp as nap time approached.
Republicans, on the other hand, executed their campaign strategies with the coherence and discipline of precision drill teams.
Things change, though.
Especially here in Indiana.
During this, one hopes, soon-to-end legislative session of the Indiana General Assembly, lawmakers have stressed, strained and struggled to produce a new property tax plan as part of the budget.
The last time the legislature took up revising property taxes—a little more than 15 years ago—voters were less than happy. They vented their displeasure on the state’s mayors—who had absolutely nothing to do with the property tax revision—simply because the chief executives for Indiana’s cities and towns were the first ones to appear on ballots after taxpayers received their new property tax bills.
Mayors—Republican and Democrat—fell like wheat before the scythe as the citizens let their fury cut through the balloting.
An experience such as that would persuade most intelligent people to approach the question of property taxes with caution.
But politicians aren’t like most people.
Particularly those in the Statehouse, who spend several months each year locked in a building of aged stone breathing the same stale air and imbibing the same stale ideas day after day after day.
In such an environment, even the most absurd ideas start to seem to make sense.
That’s why this year’s budget is, to put it mildly, a hodgepodge straining its way toward being an outright mess.
They say that a camel is a horse that has been designed by a committee.
Well, with that inspiration in mind, this session’s budget—particularly its property tax provisions—is a camel designed by a committee of exhausted and oxygen-deprived Indiana lawmakers.
The budget’s chaotic untidiness now tests GOP discipline we Hoosiers rarely have seen before.
Legislators and lobbyists have been grumbling about the property tax revisions ever since the General Assembly convened, but much of the groaning occurred beneath the surface.
No longer.
A few days ago, Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith—ever greedy for the main chance—came out publicly and called the budget an indecipherable mess.
Moreover, Beckwith—who hungers for the spotlight the way an addict hungers for his next fix—called for Gov. Mike Braun to veto the budget and call for a legislative special session to clean up the mess.
In response, Braun thus far has been silent as the sphynx, but he can’t be happy.
In Braun’s world, lieutenant governors are not supposed to speak unless spoken to, much less perform as if they were members of the loyal opposition.
But that’s the nature now of the Indiana Republican Party.
Because, thanks to years of determined and skillful gerrymandering, the GOP exerts unheard-of dominance over all three branches of Indiana’s government, the state Republican Party has begun to splinter into factions.
The cohesiveness that once defined the party is fast becoming a thing of the past.
Republicans in the legislature and the office of attorney general gave former Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, also a Republican, far more headaches than Democrats ever did.
Now, Braun, as Republican as they come, has those same headaches—and a lieutenant governor who never misses an opportunity to run rogue.
Democrats these days seem to find it more and more difficult to find leaders with whom they can fall in love.
But at least they can draw consolation from the fact that Republicans are finding it harder and harder to fall in line.
