By John Brummett

The case of Cabot’s Davy Carter provides an insightful study of the odd delicacies and subtle distinctions of the curiously nonpartisan culture of the Arkansas Legislature.

It seems they had a little Republican gathering over in Cabot, a white-flight, right-wing exurb of Little Rock.

Cabot is one of the few places outside the northwestern corner where you can actually proclaim yourself safely the Republican that most Arkansawyers are.

For the most part, Arkansas voters remain blissfully unaware of their natural Republicanism. Or, in some cases, they’re trapped in that psychological condition called denial. They’re unwilling to face the pain and stigma of introspection and admission, of having that scarlet “GOP” branded on their chests.

Carter, a 34-year-old lawyer and freshman Republican state representative, was a speaker at this Cabot Republican confab, naturally. And it seems that, in his remarks, he got a little sarcastically disapproving of a few of the legislative goings-on.

Partisan at a partisan event — imagine that.

But, and this is a key point, he was pithily critical not of any person or any entity or any general culture, but only of a few of the specific actions of the legislative session of which he was a part and that was run by nominal Democrats, moderates, mostly.

That bill that came out his House to undo the Electoral College — Carter poked snide fun at the faux wisdom of that. A couple of measures that seemed to invoke state parenting over actual parenting — he didn’t care for those so much either.

Carter also took exception to the growth of state government taking place over in Little Rock. And he said they really need more Republicans in that Capitol, and he predicted we’re going to get us some in the next election go-round.

Then this happened: The reporter for the fine Cabot weekly newspaper wrote up a straight and accurate account of this event and these comments. The editor, doing what editors often do, decided to punch up the article with a bit of perspective and zing.

The editor added a new opening — lead, we call it — that said it appeared Carter had a bitter taste in his mouth from his freshman experience as a Republican in the state Legislature.

Oh, dear.

Editors do this kind of thing all the time. This touch-up, this seasoning with a bit of flourish, would be fine, a legitimate journalistic enhancement, 99 instances in a hundred.

That one exception, though, would be when the touch-up took an Arkansas Republican legislator’s criticisms of specific bills or issues and made them appear generally critical of the body in which he served and personally critical of the Democratic leadership thereof.

With our insanely restrictive term limits law and our odd one-party culture, tyros go to Little Rock and come to be uncommonly reliant on their staff and the leadership so that they might be able to get done the few things they’ve promised.

In a Republican’s case, he is outnumbered three-to-one and the leadership is all Democratic.

So it is one thing, and a permitted one, for a Republican to disagree openly and vote differently on occasional issues. It is another thing, and an implicitly verboten one, for a Republican to attack the very body itself or any of the members therein on what could be interpreted as a personal basis.

The seemingly innocuous little editing took Carter’s remarks plumb over the line.

So Carter spent the next few days writing letters to the editor and open letters to his constituents explaining that he’d been hurled way out of context.

He also was having to explain to his Democratic colleagues that, hey, he had enjoyed working with them and they’d been swell and he had no personal issues with any of them, or bitter taste in his mouth, and that, hey, we got some good things done in the session even if we had our little honest differences on the margins here and there.

The Cabot paper ran a correction and Arkansas legislative politics returned to its peculiar normalcy.
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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.