GeekwithaGun wrote:I don't understand why they state "We don't have the votes." and never bring it to an actual vote. Why not show us by actually voting on it and then we can know who is really just giving lip service to any issue and who is supporting the issue (whatever issue that might be).
I know one reason is that any rep that votes the opposite of what they campaigned on or stated they supported may not be re-elected - and this is just a sad and pathetic way to represent you and I.
Answer: Long before a bill ever gets through committee and onto the floor for an up or down vote, most senators and/or representatives already have a good idea of two things:
A) whether or not the opposition caucus (in this case, democrats) will support the bill, and
B) what kind of support the bill enjoys within their own caucus (in this case, republicans)
Mind you, the capital doesn't guarantee passage either, it might only get you an opportunity to vote. From those two pieces of information, they know how much political capital will need to be expended to get a bill which enjoys only marginal support out of committee, voted on, actually passed and sent to the governor's desk for signature. If a bill is
close to having enough votes before it is referred out for a vote, then it might be worth the expenditure of political capital to push it over the top. If a bill has a snowball's chance in hades of passing, then it isn't worth a plugged nickel of capital......which will mean an individual legislator's support means very little if the support from other legislators just isn't there.
The thing about political capital which a lot of political tyros don't understand is that it is not limitless. It is just like a bank account. And like a bank account from which all the money has been spent and there is no more for other purchases, when political capital is expended on one bill, there is less of it left for that legislator to push through other bills. Also, just like with a bank account, political operators and elected officials who have been around for a long time tend to have more political capital in their accounts at the beginning of the silly season than newly elected politicians or newly minted legislative advocates. One last thing....it is possible to create enough ill-will with your colleagues that you begin your next legislative session in the hole, and you have to expend capital just to get back on an even footing.
So when a politician looks at the political calculus, he or she has to decide whether or not the issue is worth the investment, if the expenditure required will leave them too little capital to spend on getting other, possibly equally important, bills through the process and onto the governor's desk.
At the beginning of the season, unlicensed OC—if properly written (it wasn't)—had
some support, but not as much as licensed OC. That meant that getting passage of unlicensed OC (UOC) would require a much bigger capital expenditure than getting licensed OC (LOC) passed. So the deck was already stacked against unlicensed OC.
These are just facts. We don't have to like it, but if you cannot acknowledge facts because you don't
like them, then in the 12 stepping world, that is called "denial". Denial plus $2.50 will get you a small coffee at Starbucks, but it sure as hades won't get your favorite piece of legislation passed.
So now, along come the OCT and OCTC hotheads and all their obnoxious behavior and flaming arrows, and some of their arrows start a fire in the "UOC House", and politicians who
were lukewarm to the idea come to the conclusion that this is arson of the stupidest kind - an arsonist who burns his own house down around his ears to make a point - and they want nothing to do with it all of a sudden. Whatever support UOC
had now plummets to zero.....because nobody in their right political mind wants to expend their political capital on supporting arsonists.
The thing is (as is often the case with arson), in so doing the arsonists also imperiled the building next door too - the "LOC House". So now UOC is dead in the water at the bottom of the hill it got pushed down, and LOC is at the top, teetering on the edge. What happens next defies any other descriptive than "pure insanity": Kory Watkins pulls his stunt in a representative's office. Suddenly, panic buttons are being installed in representatives' offices, and nobody wants to touch
any kind of OC with a 10 ft pole.......and the LOC building has started its slide down to the water of political death.
So now picture yourself as a legislator. You've got a "possible" of $100 in political capital. UOC
would have cost you $50, leaving $50 for all the other legislation you support combined - including a number of bills that have nothing at all to do with gun rights but which are important to your constituents. After the OCT/OCTC demonstrations, the cost of UOC goes up to $80, leaving you $20 to do your constituents' bidding (keeping in mind that your constituents might not be all that fired up about OC of any kind to begin with). Then Kory Watkins pulls his truly "dumbass of the year" stunt, and now UOC costs you $99, and you have $1 left to get bills passed that are important to your constituents. Would you not be crazy to spend that $99 that way?
What's worse is that before all of this, LOC might have been worth $35, still leaving you enough capital to get other things done; but after the OCT/OCTC demonstrations, that price goes up to $55.......still doable, but much more costly, and leaving you that much less to do other things. Then along comes Krazy Kory, and now the cost of LOC is $80, leaving you $20 for everything else........still
theoretically possible, but
not really worth it if everything else has to suffer because of it.
So, instead of blowing 99% of his capital on a chance to vote for the dead-in-the-water UOC, or 80% to vote for the still theoretically possible LOC, the smart legislator might turn his attention to things that still have a very favorable chance at passage, such as Campus Carry, or the elimination of no-carry locations, hunter protections, civil penalties for improper posting of 30.06 by municipalities, etc., etc.,............ALL of which are ALSO important to gun owners AND are doable.
THIS IS HOW POLITICS WORKS.........AT ALL LEVELS. It's just a fact. The militant OC crowd refuses to acknowledge the facts. Instead, they substitute Facebook memes and accuse everyone around them of being anti-gun. Honestly, it is like trying to have a conversation with a child who threatens to hold his breath until his face turns blue. My answer? "Fine, go ahead and strangle yourself. Maybe we'll get OC passed in your absence."
I am really tired of the infantile behavior. Don't complain that politicians try to be good stewards of their limited political capital resources, or that they react unfavorably to the monkeyshines of CJ Grisham and Kory Watkins. Complain instead to the idiots in the leadership of the OC movement. Tell them you want them to cool it and listen to the voices of experience. Tell the leaders that they are drowning the message of open carry with their behavior.
This isn't wishful thinking on my part, but it occurs to me that if the car that clipped Kory Watkins a few weeks before he pulled his stunt had killed him instead of just clipping him, there would still be some small mathematical chance for passage of unlicensed OC, and a still fairly good chance for passage of licensed OC. What was Kory Watkins up when he got clipped? He was harassing cops at a DWI checkpoint. Nobody with that kind of reputation is going to get much support for anything in the legislature, because no legislator in his or her right mind wants to be associated with someone who harasses cops during the lawful performance of their duties.
The members of both OCT and OCTC show extraordinarily bad decision making by continuing to endorse the leadership of the kinds of people they are currently led by.