By Curmudgeon
Picking up where we left off yesterday on the Buttars matter, there is a sound editorial in the Standard-Examiner this morning. The editorial argues that while Buttars should be relegated to the back benches in the Senate and lose his leadership posts, it's up to the voters to remove him and no one else. [Of course, if Buttars had any sense of decency, he'd resign. But awaiting decency from Utah Republican legislators is often a long and wearying business.]
There is also a very interesting story in the Salt Lake Tribune this morning , reporting that Buttars lost his committee chairmanship not for what he said, but because he broke his promise to the Senate Republican leadership not to be a leading spokesman in the Senate on gay rights issues. From the story:
Senate leaders disciplined Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, not for anti-gay comments he made in a recent interview, but because he violated a deal with leadership that he not talk about gay issues, a senator said Saturday.In short, Buttars was removed because his word, given to his senate colleagues, turned out to be no good. In politics, once it becomes known that your word is no good, your effectiveness all but collapses, since those you have to work with know you cannot be trusted. [Same thing Mayor Godfrey is running into since he broke his agreement with the Council regarding projects the city lobbyist would work on being jointly approved by both. When Godfrey assigned the lobbyist to work on a bill, since passed, installing him as the un-removable head of Ogden's RDA, it became clear to all on the Council, or it should have, that the Mayor's word was no good, that agreements with him, unless reduced to ordinances, were worthless. His increasing difficulties with the Council since then spring in no small part, I think, from Council members finally coming to understand that the Mayor's word is not good, that a handshake agreement with him is worthless.]
"Most of what Senator Buttars said, I agree with," Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said in a weekly Red Meat Radio program he hosts on K-TALK. "We as a Senate caucus had an agreement that because Sen. Buttars had become such a lightning rod on this issue, he would not be the spokesman on this issue, and basically he violated that agreement...." [I]t was the breach of that directive that led to the reprimand, according to Stephenson.
"It happened, not because he said a lot of things wrong, but because he decided to be the spokesman again," Stephenson said.
Interesting story in the Trib. Worth a look.
