Senator Bisbee Gets Knifed in the Back AGAIN
A year or so ago Senator Dave Bisbee (Rep., Rogers) thought he had a good chance to be President -Pro Tem of the Senate. That is the person who by tradition actually runs the day-to-day operations of that body. Bisbee had half the Democrats in the Senate minus one ready to vote him in. By tradition, the longest serving member of the Senate gets the job, and Bisbee fit the bill. He also had taken pains not to offend his Democratic colleagues. Bisbee thought he would have the support of all eight republican senators, assuring him the post.
He was shocked to discover that half the republicans, including party chairman Gilbert Baker, had made a secret deal with a group of Senate Democrats that even the liberal media refers to ominiously as "The Brotherhood". NWA Senators stuck with Bisbee, but half of the eight Republican Senators voted for the democrat. Bisbee lost 18-17 to fairly conservative Democrat Jack Critcher.
Wednesday saw Bisbee take another blow. There was an organizational meeting of the senate that day. An unnamed senator popped a "rule change" on the Senate at this meeting. The rule change was that, rather than seniority, that the Senate co-chair of the powerful Joint Budget committee be determined by a vote of the Senate. The effect was to allow The Brotherhood to bypass Sen. Dave Bisbee, and put Republican Sen. Shawn Womack in his place. The Brotherhood prevailed, 21-14. The newcomers to the Senate must have detected which way the wind was blowing and jumped on board with the Brotherhood, making their numbers even stronger.
It had to be a Republican as co-chair, so why the piling on Bisbee? We don't know, and are open to ideas.
He was shocked to discover that half the republicans, including party chairman Gilbert Baker, had made a secret deal with a group of Senate Democrats that even the liberal media refers to ominiously as "The Brotherhood". NWA Senators stuck with Bisbee, but half of the eight Republican Senators voted for the democrat. Bisbee lost 18-17 to fairly conservative Democrat Jack Critcher.
Wednesday saw Bisbee take another blow. There was an organizational meeting of the senate that day. An unnamed senator popped a "rule change" on the Senate at this meeting. The rule change was that, rather than seniority, that the Senate co-chair of the powerful Joint Budget committee be determined by a vote of the Senate. The effect was to allow The Brotherhood to bypass Sen. Dave Bisbee, and put Republican Sen. Shawn Womack in his place. The Brotherhood prevailed, 21-14. The newcomers to the Senate must have detected which way the wind was blowing and jumped on board with the Brotherhood, making their numbers even stronger.
It had to be a Republican as co-chair, so why the piling on Bisbee? We don't know, and are open to ideas.
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Thursday, November 09, 2006
20 Comments:
Listen, as a Democrat who regularly checks out this blog, I can't let this election go without making one comment. Roby Brock's Talk Business is reporting the breakdowns on turnout in the various congressional districts were as follows: CD1 24%, CD2 27.5%, CD3, 25.5%, CD4, 23%.
There was a lot of talk about polling on this blog, with thoughtful analysis, but I think it's time to admit that you were way off base. You said that CD3 would capture something like 29% of the statewide total. You criticized the polls showing Beebe ahead by double digits, singling out Ernie Oakleaf. At one point, you said that every single poll out there was wrong, except for the Zogby internet polls.
Let the record reflect that Beebe beat Hutchinson, 55-41. Oakleaf was dead-on. You criticized him publicly, and you were wrong. You owe him a public apology.
The third district stayed home and LR had a huge turnout because of the Mayoral race. NWA is 29% of the electorate when they vote.
Mark's logic was sound, but wrong. I don't think any apologies are in order. Maybe Mark should publicly state he was wrong but apologize...I don't think so.
Having said that, if the conservative base in the 3rd disctrict would not have been turned off by the liberal Rep. party establishment the turnout would probably have been close to 29%. In 2008, assuming the REp. party starts paying attention to their principles again, the total turnout from the 3rd will probably be 29 - 30% (assuming the continued growth patterns continue (as well as the massive population declines in the south).
If, if, if. If 100% of registered voters voted in CD1, but only 50% voted in CD3, then CD1 would be 40% of the vote. If all blacks voted, Democrats would win every election. So what? You have to deal with reality, not the world as you wish it would be. My specific point is, before the election, we had polls from various pollsters predicting outcomes. Mark Moore ridiculed the results of Talk Business and Ernie Oakleaf, saying they were wrong, their methods were flawed, they undercounted certain groups.
It turned out Oakleaf was right, his methodology was correct, his predictions were accurate. You can sit and dream all day about turnout, but it doesn't change the fact that good pollsters made accurate predictions, and you folks not only put your heads in the sand but insulted the messengers. An apology is in order.
This is too funny. Your own Debbie Pelley can't spew enough hatred at Sen. Bisbee and you play the other side.
Debbie is her own person. I don't control Debbie Pelley, but I invited her to give her own opinions on this blog because her research is second to none and I agree with her most of the time.
I never shared her degree of angst at Dave Bisbee, though he is too left for me sometimes. I taught with his son, and I'd say his son is a good guy and I agreed with him on fiscal issues.
This is from that thread where I crunched the numbers and made the predictions...
Mr. Brock sticks by his claim that the 4th will have essentially the same turnout as the 3rd (25%), and that the 1st will lag behind the 3rd by only 1%. He also says that the 3rd district "Is not going to account for.... 28% of the vote. It will be doing well to pull 26% of the statewide vote"
I have said that the third Congressional District will be closer to a third of the vote than it is a quarter or that it will be "close to a third". So the midpoint between a third and a quarter is 27.5%. I feel confident that the third district will exceed this proportion of the vote. In fact, he says that it will not pull 28% and I predict it will pull between 28 to 30% of the statewide vote.
So let's lay out our predictions, so you can see after election day who is more credible.....
.............1st.....4th.....3rd
Brock........24%.....25%.....25%
Moore....... 22%.....22%.....29%
In real life the 2nd dominated with 27.5%. I think I did not factor in the Little Rock Mayor's race which sent turnout to huge levels, plus Beebe's home county.
The others, based on congressional votes, were like this...
1st....4th....3rd
23.5%..22.6%..26.5% with a little rounding
So he was off 4.4% for the districts in question, I was off 4.6%.
I asked people to come back here and see who was farther off after the election, and it was me. I have to own up to that. I truth I was not that far off on the proportions, but I figured the Republicans would win the 3rd by overwhelming margins and thus keep these races close. THAT did not happen. The district still had disproportionate turnout compared to the 1st and 4th, but when the 3rd only goes GOP 55-45 and the smaller districts go Democrat 65-35 it cancels out the smaller size.
I also must own up to the fact that I bought into the "Asa has an internal poll that shows the race is close" business. That story agreed with Zogby and Rasmussen. The fact is that Survey USA and even Oakleaf's opinion research was closer than that. I did not post my predicted results, but am on record as saying that last Zogby polled that showed Asa up was fishy. I would have called it 50-44 or 51-45 Beebe in the end, but I did not want to print that before the election.
The bottom line is that Survey USA and the Oakleaf's were right and I was wrong.
This from the Democrat who reads this blog -- good enough for me. I myself bought into Zogby's internet-poll nonsense before the 2004 race, where he showed Kerry surging at the end. The truth is all that much more bitter when expectations are dashed.
In truth, Mark, I strongly disagree with you on most matters of public policy, and sometimes as a Christian the things you say even scare and disturb me, but I find your style and your tone to be mostly reasonable, much more so than your Republican friends on other blogs. I'll keep visiting this site after the election.
What things "scare and disturb" you?
I think they wanted a good republican who would help the party. Womack is from one of the growing GOP centers of the state. Bisbee was too cozy with the democrats and the GOP did not like that. If they are to regain state office they will have to be an opposition instead of a slave like Bisbee has done. I hope this is a hint of a possible conservative majority.
"Bisbee was too cozy with the democrats"
Are you insane? Those "good republicans" conspired with the Democrats to make a Democrat President Pro Tem of the Senate when Republican Bisbee had it all locked up.
The Brotherhood is in control and they would not have changed the rules to put Womack in there over Bisbee if Womack had not signalled his willingness to play along with whatever plans they have in mind.
Don't you get it? "Party Loyalty" only means that pro-lifers should cast aside their principles and support abortion-backers "for the party". It NEVER applies to the leadership staying loyal to the base, or from back-stabbing their own in exchange for political crumbs from the dems.
Mark, you really need to trust Debbie Pelley on this one my friend. She knows of what she speaks and understands certain dynamics about the Senate that I think you are not quite aware of.
Oaklief was lucky. There is no way that undecided broke evenly to wind up with his result.
I have a theory that you have to be a certain level of "good" for "luck" to matter.
Found this on another blog. Pretty interesting:
What the commentators and the editorial writers never tell you about this issue is that Baker and other Republcian Senators strongly urged Bisbee to seek the Pro Tem position and he refused to do it when they wanted him to.
Bisbee preached to his GOP colleagues that it just wouldn't be right for a member from the minority party to lead the Senate. He talked down to them and told them they were just being partisan by wanting him to be Pro Tem and he just would not be a part of it.
In fact, when Percy Malone proposed a rule change that said no Republican could ever serve as or even vote for the Pro Tem, Bisbee (Percy's lap dog) lobbied other Republican senators to support the rule change because cutting the minority party out of the process was the "right thing to do."
Ahhh. Then comes the rest of the story. After Bisbee told everyone that he would not seek the Pro Tem position, Democrat Jack Critcher, the next in line in seniority, announced he would seek the job. Percy Malone, Jim Argue, Steve Bryles and Jim Luker don't like Critcher. That small group of darkside senators knew they couldn't beat Critcher with another Democrat so they used Bisbee as their pawn hoping to put their 10-12 Democrats together with 8 Republicans who they assumed would be partisan. The problem was they did not expect half of the Republicans would vote for a Democrat.
The darkside had controlled the Senate since Beebe left and they did not want to lose power. They, as a small minority of senators, used intimidation and controll of the committees to runover other senators. They controlled everything from policy, agendas, appointments, and of course the money. The darkside would end every session by taking a truck load of money to their districts and dishing out a little more to the other senators that would obey their commands. Then they would screw other more independent minded senators by not giving appointments or appropriation and by blocking bills just for spite.
Brummett and Brantley and Wickline and Doug Thompson won't tell you that side of the story though because Percy and Broadway and Hill and Argue feed them information and vote the way they like. The real story is that more people are more involved in contributing to the Senate than ever before. Now the darkside is relagated to snipping, pouting, and trying to figure out how to disrupt and embarass other members.
We saw the maturity and class of the darkside on organization day. Percy Malone, contrary to the established good taste of the Senate, bumped Randy Laverty out of his office space just because he could. Then, moments later, Mary Ann Salmon knocked Paul Bookout out of the seat on the Senate floor that Paul's father Senator Jerry Bookout had before he died earlier this year.
that is interesting. whoever is telling this story thinks Beebe is the "good guy".
no... Bebee was the darkside ringleader.
I am glad that the GOP and honest democrats are working togeather to make the state better. If this holds true we could have a good governor by 2012.
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