Quote:
Originally Posted by DubaiSis
I heard recently that a Congressman will change his vote if he gets 6 calls on a subject. 6. Because he assumes 1000 people agree with the 1 person who actually picks up the phone. If every logical person in Oklahoma (and I'm sure there are a few  of you out there) made one phone call or sent an email that was carefully worded and polite, you could revolutionize Oklahoma. If the only people who are squeaking are the wingnuts, that's who they're going to respond to. |
I think you're on to something. This is going to be a very Oklahoma specific answer, but I'm at a pretty good vantage point to understand what's going on here.
Prior to the last 5 years or so, Oklahoma had been run by the Democrats in the legislature exclusively for over 90 years. These were Southern [note the capital S] Democrats who fought racial integration, socially enlightened policy, etc. They were corrupt and dominated by trial lawyers, which has resulted in the practice of law being particularly lucrative for my colleague-kin in certain areas.
Back in the late 80s/early 90s, the Chamber of Commerce hatched a plan to control the state. With the help of the local media, headed by E.K. Gaylord (those of you in Nashville are acquainted), who had just been put through the ringer by the Attorney General, were naturally very anti trial lawyer and compliant in this endeavor, began to malign attorneys at all levels, to push "tort reform" as salvation, to go after unions and to rejigger the courtrooms to favor large institutions with deep pockets. Bit by bit, folks bought that these ideas were "conservative," even though conservative used to mean personal responsibility, not corporate immunity, the public bought it.
With evil trial lawyers marginalized and the word "conservative" being associated with virtuous for a slight majority of our citizens, the Republican brand caught fire. It was almost a snowball effect--a politician could say anything was conservative and the public would buy it. Destroying Unions? Conservative. Getting rid of pollution controls? Conservative. Capping damages in lawsuits? Conservative. [not making this up] Ensuring oil and gas royalty owners can't file class action suits against producers? Must be Conservative.
To make matters worse, the wingnuts figured this out. We have two groups, OCPAC (Oklahoma Conservative PAC) and the Sooner Tea Party, which are formed of a bunch of self-described conservative/libertarian/constitutionalist malcontents who believe almost uniformly that UN Agenda 21 is a conspiracy against the Constitution to steal our sovereignty and that our President is a Kenyan Muslim whose goal is to marginalize the U.S. to make up for English colonialism. These two groups (which both claim the other is too liberal and continually push one another to further and further extremes) figured out they could take control of the message of Conservatives which the Chamber of Commerce used to control.
If a Republican dares to speak against any of these groups, they will run someone in the primary against him. Sometimes they even do it to their good foot soldiers who march in lock step with the agenda. I am friends with a couple of our Republican legislators. They're intelligent and reasonable individuals, but they have been forced to support some of the stupidest legislation imaginable.
Just a few examples:
-- Making it a felony for a state official to do anything in compliance with Obamacare.
--Allowing local school districts to opt out of state mandated standards.
--Exempting intrastate manufactured firearms from federal regulations entirely so long as they remain within the state.
