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with the help of a strong Republican negative vote, in the House General Laws Committee.
A similar fate appeared to await this year’s version.
But now the GOP legislators are having second thoughts. A ranking Republican member of the House confirmed to me last week that his party may use the King bill to attempt to put House Democrats on a poltical hot spot in the fall elections.
If the bill perishes in committee, the other House Democrats will be spared having to vote on the controversial measure. Hence the Republicans have come up with a strategy for forcing all Democrats to go on record on the bill at minimal political risk to themselves.
When the King legislation comes before the 20-member General Laws Committee this time around, the eight GOP committee members will ‘take a walk.” That is, they will abstain from voting.
Thus, if the 12 Democratic members report the measure out, it will go to the floor where all members must then cast recorded votes for or against it.
Republicans believe, if the bill passes, white voters in conservative areas will blame ihe Democrats, and if it fails either in committee or on the floor, black voters everywhere will be furious.
In either case the GOP strategists believe they have ihe Democrats boxed in.
Perhaps they do, but there is one terror unrelated to the elections with which they may not have reckoned.
House Speaker A. L. Philpott makes committee assignments, and in the past be has been reasonably fair about giving Republicans Iheir equitable share of committee posts.
But if the GOP pulls this caper, the powerful “A. L.” may be mad enough to let the nffending Republicans roam ihe halls of Mr. Jefferson’s Capitol like so many lost souls for the next few years while solid Democratic committees deliberate upon the proposed laws of the Commonwealth.
Such is the hardball politics of'83.
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