The Arkansas Special

Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, assigned by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to finagle a way out of this Common Core imbroglio, says we must change the name and tinker.

With a proposal like that, we ought to put Tim on the cosmetology board to join Asa.


It must be exhausting to bear the burden of reasonableness and get elected by irrational voters who don't believe in government.

I'm talking about you, Asa, with your killing the private-option form of Medicaid expansion by changing its name and tinkering on the edges.

Now comes Griffin to plop that very template on Common Core, a simple set of nationwide educational goals that was the brainchild of conservative governors years ago.

But then the simple concept got recast in the hinterlands as a sinister brainwashing of our children by the Kenyan Muslim socialist who is into the stretch run of the ruination he intends to have visited upon us by the end of his presidency in January 2017.

A few weeks ago Griffin signaled in this space what he and his special review commissioner would do. He told me that about 75 percent of the complaints about Common Core were not about the objectives, but about local district plans for implementation. The other 25 percent or so represented flaws in the goals themselves, he said.

The issue, he said, was figuring out whether the state could preserve the 75 percent, encourage better implementation and presume to change the 25 percent.

So he said Tuesday that the answer to all that was yes.

Oh, and about that name, Common Core: Griffin said we need to change that, because, you see, Arkansas will no longer be part of any Obama-ized scheme. We will be self-customized, you see.

Have you ever heard of such a thing? Why, yes, you have, if you were listening.

Nearly six months ago Hutchinson declared that the private-option form of Medicaid expansion was a lethal name for the private-option form of Medicaid expansion. So he proposed we keep the private option for two years. But he appointed a task force to find a way during those two years to do what the private option does without calling it the private option.

It must be exhausting to pretend to oppose your job while you do your job. It find it fairly tiresome merely to observe.

So, yes, I am outing as reasonable our governor and lieutenant governor. It's the very charge they fear most.

They represent a state Republican Party that would have Donald Trump as a dinner speaker. So the partisan premium is clearly on big but empty outsider talk, not actual inside performance.

Fortunately for them, there is a significant element of the contemporary conservative base that enjoys the instant adrenaline rush of tall talk more than it keeps up with whether you're actually walking the walk after you finish talking the talk.

It reminds me of the summer church revivals of my youth. Some fiery renowned preacher would come through town telling us how doomed our sinful world was and that we were headed straight to hell if we didn't walk the aisle and repent. The point was to produce big response numbers that would become legend and land this blowhard more moneymaking gigs down the road.

We'd keep singing that last verse of "Just As I Am" until the first two rows were filled with aisle-walking salvation-seekers, some sobbing. We'd baptize so many we'd splash the tub dry.

Then we'd all go back to sinning as usual a couple of days later.

Those aisle-walkers who were back to sinning two days later--that's the conservative voting base, in case you missed the metaphor.

Asa and Tim--they are the regular home-congregation preachers who must try to keep the church functioning in the real world after the revivalist has moved on to scare the daylights out of other people and collect their check for his trouble.

So Asa and now Tim must decry and yet execute. They must placate and yet perform. They must pander and yet finesse.

They must carry a lighted match in one hand. And they must carry a water bucket in the other in case a fire actually breaks out.

Being cursed by reason, they know that destructiveness won't actually work as a long-term policy or long-term politics.

What works inevitably in politics and policy is a train that runs on time.

Medicaid expansion helps keep the train running on time for the state budget and for hospitals. Participating in coordinated national education objectives helps the train run on time for our school kids.

The key is to announce as the train enters the station that you blew it up along the way--that this is not that same old Obama train, but the Arkansas Special.

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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 07/30/2015

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