From ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society:

On the first day of the new legislative session last week, the new Republican majority in the Georgia House of Representatives has passed unprecedented procedural rules allowing House Speaker Glenn Richardson to "appoint legislative "hawks" who can swoop in to any committee with the authority to vote the way the speaker wants them to." According to the Macon Telegraph, "the idea is for the Hawks to be able to move legislation out of committees where the Democratic minority has been able to persuade enough Republican members to stall a bill or vote it down." Although Richardson says he will appoint no more than 2 or 3 members to this position, the actual rule specifies no maximum number.

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to political strategy, but one of the sharper ones should have already started a campaign tagging Republicans, nationwide, as arrogant elitists. Why? The same protections that they enjoyed in the minority (for, in some places, 80 years) are the ones they can't tolerate as the majority party. They want to eliminate the very dissent that let their ideas be heard so the nation could decide about them.

This is not a new strategy for the wingnutty right: they demand concessions, protections, and obesiance for themselves that they absolutely will not tolerate for others. I used to call this "laws are for other people," but that's not the best term, nor is "elitist." Corrente picked up Atrios's term "IOKIYAR", for "It's OK if you're a Republican!" None of these are getting the point across, though: these people think they're the pigs in Animal Farm: "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others."

I'd really like to see people with good communications skills take this on with the same fervor the wingnuts do with terms like "flip-flop" and "obstructionist." Plus, the Democrats need to get their house in order, as the end of that Georgia story shows:

Still, in a state where all three branches of government are now controlled by Republicans, the change received significant bipartisan support.