Compromise for the Permanent Minority

Regarding the "debate," one-sided though it might be, over the merits of the School Board selection reform bill, I have word that our Republican leaders are compromising with the Democrats. Delegates Leopold and Dwyer are indeed supporting what has become known as the Love Bill because it represents a compromise and, well that's the best we can hope for, being that we are in the minority.

So the debate on the merits of the bill is largely academic now that the bill will most certainly be approved. The new debate now turns to the benefits of compromising, again. I may be going out on a limb here but I cannot recall a single instance in the last twenty years when the Republican agenda has been advanced by compromise. I mean truly advanced. So I will predict that the policy born of the Love Bill will be bad, and will be used to make Democrats appear as though they are doing something while the Republicans gripe on the sidelines. And when it fails, the Republicans in Anne Arundel County will be blamed, somehow.

It will be our fault that the school board is now selected by an unelected commission of God-knows-who from the TAAAC/MSTA. After all, the county GOP delegation co-sponsored and voted for the thing. "They griped about the Nominating Convention and now they're griping about the Commission!" the Democrats will say, over and over and over... . It won't take a professional communicator to make the sweetest hay for the Democrats out of whatever happens.

The best possible outcome would be for the Republicans (that's us) to refuse to go along with the charade, forcing the Democrats to defend their claptrap. Oh...but it isn't their claptrap....It's ours, or more precisely, it's John Leopold's claptrap. Trying to explain this to my son a few minutes ago, I came up with this:

You see Mike it's like this: There's this rotten footbridge called "Compromise" spanning the divide between the Democrats and the Republicans. The Dems sit on the other side trying to get us to come across the bridge, to compromise (you see, they never have to cross the bridge to compromise). Well, Leopold has crafted a bill and set out across the bridge to deliver it to Del. Love of the Democrats. If that wasn't bad enough, Leopold stands at bridge and beckons his fellow Republicans across. "C'mon!" he yells. "The Dems are willing to compromise! Come over and stand with us!" Sure, the bridge will hold one, nimble member of the GOP. But the bridge will surely fail under the weight of the whole delegation, now stampeding toward the bridge.

But why would Del. Leopold do such a thing? We will never know because Leopold doesn't have the guts to defend his compromise. I can only assume he was led to believe that doing so would get him re-elected.

We will reap, once again, what we have sown, and we will eat the bitter fruit and moan and groan, and profess shock and dismay as though it has never happened to us before. Meanwhile, the teachers union-suckled board and public school system are busy erasing "Nominating Convention" and replacing it with "The Commission" on signs, letterhead and websites and everything becomes even darker.

Mike Netherland
Severna Park