Who'd a-thought it? This governor has somehow managed to bring Arkansas' ever feudin' and fightin' Republicans under one big tent the way the Great Communicator himself, Ronald Reagan, once did. And what a motley crew it remains: advance and rear guards both, Trumpians and Trumpettes, marching bands and cheerleaders . . . the whole out-of-sync menagerie. There hasn't been anything seen like it since old Noah marched the animals, or most of them anyway, aboard his capacious ark. For there always a few stragglers who never get the word. This presidential election year you've got your RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only, your new Republicans and old, all 57 varieties if not more. You've even got the Republican wing of the Republican Party somewhere in the mix.
There was a time when the only glue holding the less than Grand Old Party together in this state was the hope of a federal appointment when the Republicans were in the White House in Washington and in the doghouse in Arkansas, as they usually were across the South after The War.
Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end. But of course they did as Republicans reversed roles with Democrats, who are now this state's minority political persuasion. For the more things change, the more they remain the same if by different names. No, it's not easy to recall those separate-but-unequal days when the South had only one crop (cotton), one party (Democratic, of course), and one issue (race) that was never discussed in polite company by polite people. It's an upside-down world now for those who grew up in the bad old days and were more than half raised by jolly Aunt Jemimas and dependable Uncle Bens, yet a strangely familiar one. For only the labels on the cans in the larder have been switched, not the contents.
This ever whirling, ever swirling merry-go-'round just keeps going, and where she stops, or if she ever stops, nobody knows. But everybody with a memory should. Enjoy the ride aboard this spinning top. Lots of folks spend good money at the state fair to climb aboard this whirligig, just as they do for the cotton candy, corndogs, and other indigestible treats on the menu. None of it may be good for the innards, but folks young and old who've never experienced the rides and lights before may think it's great fun, however long it takes them to recover.
Each state seems to have its own atrocious specialty in the food department, but that's America, land of the free and home of bicarbonate soda. Pepto-Bismol! as Boyce Alford, he of the state Legislature, used to proclaim as if making a toast. Hey, what a country! What variety, what differences, what a patchwork of a country--and party. Has there ever been any quite like it? Of course not, for every nation revels in its own characteristic national lunacy.
But once Uncle Asa administers his magical elixir, all is well, or will seem to be. He can pull rabbits out of a hat, summon dancing girls out of a cake, and even call spirits from the vasty deep. Even if they never come. For it's the illusion that counts, and master illusionists are hard to come by these or any other days. Onward and downward the Republican Party may go, but it'll go together, keeping in step with Uncle Asa.
------------v------------
Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 06/15/2016