Credit state Sen. Jolie Justus, D-Kansas City, with the best description this year of what has beset Republican politics in Missouri.
Early in the session, the Senate was bogged down during debate of pro-business bills supported by GOP leadership. With overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, Republicans shouldn't have much difficulty in passing priority bills. Democrats have become nearly irrelevant on some issues.
But on one legislative day, a series of Republican-on-Republican crimes demonstrated the difficulty of turning a winning election into a lasting mandate.
While Democrats sat back and watched, various factions within the GOP conspired against each other.
During a break in the action, Ms. Justus, almost giddy, commented to me about the intraparty dispute. She called it "Republageddon."
The party that engineered President Barack Obama's midterm 'shellacking" is experiencing adjustment issues. Nationally, GOP House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio is struggling to reconcile his party's split between the Tea Party zealots who believe compromise is born of the devil, and veteran members who see such rigidity as a recipe for a short congressional career.
How daunting is Mr. Boehner's challenge? House Republicans actually almost passed a budget even more austere than the one proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., after Democrats chose to sit out the vote to make a point. When Republicans realized what was happening, they quickly changed their votes, lest they make the wrong symbolic point.
And in Missouri, it's not much different. Sen. Rob Mayer, R-Dexter, was the early victor in a power play that saw him knock the more moderate Sen. Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, out of the way for leadership in the Senate. But lately, Mr. Mayer seems almost beside himself, unsure of how to control the extreme and unpredictable rhetoric of his young Tea Party upstarts, particularly Brian Nieves of Washington and Rob Schaaf of St. Joseph.
Nothing highlighted the GOP splits more than the bungled redistricting process, in which the two committee chairmen, Rep. John Diehl, R-Town and County, and Sen. Scott Rupp, R-Wentzville, lobbed verbal grenades at each other over the question of which incumbent Republican member of the U.S. House deserved the most gerrymandered protection in the map-drawing process.
House and Senate bickering is not new. But that doesn't minimize the serious angst being shown publicly between members of the same party, who just a few months ago were basking in the glory of a landslide.
Perhaps that will be the lasting nugget of meaning from the 2010 election. It's easier to be against something than to be for something; it is easier to tear down than build; it is easier to create an empire than recognize the signs as it comes crashing down around you.
History books are clear: Empires crumble. Whether Roman or British, Russian or Prussian, Democratic or Republican, there comes a time after a rise to power in which governing creates a different sort of pressure. Who will be the next leader? Who will show weakness by daring to build coalitions across party lines?
When Democrats found a common enemy in former President George W. Bush, they focused the nation's anger and rode a wave of electoral success in 2008. But, once in power, they overreached and created an opening for a GOP revival.
Republicans of 2010 vintage, it seems, could suffer the same fate.
