MOScout Daily Update: Surveying the House GOP Caucus - Ethics Timeline - NYT on Lake City and more...

Taking GOP Caucus Temperature

I reached out to various folks over the weekend to try to get a read on the House Republican Caucus temperature after last week’s meeting. 

It can be hard to get your arms around the House.  The Senate – with 34 members – is manageable.  You listen to the late-night filibusters and you can get an accurate read on most personalities, and suss out where the votes might be.  The House would be unwieldly except that they usually play “follow the leader,” and vote in partisan packs.  But a situation like this is tougher to read.

Here’s how it looks to me…

·       Obviously if there were the will to remove Speaker Dean Plocher, it would have happened last week. 

·       One source said they thought Plocher might lose a secret ballot vote.  I’m not sure about that, but the number of folks who think Plocher should resign, plus the folks who would like for this “distraction” to be over (and if resignation is the exit ramp, that’s fine) is, I think, definitely over 50%.

·       However, the lines aren’t necessarily clean.  There are folks who wouldn’t mind if Plocher resigned but also think it’s probably better if he just serves out this final stretch without a “shake-up.”  This is the anti-drama caucus, if you will.  It’s not a small group.

·       One danger for Plocher is that he’s made “clerical error” his defense.  Most folks roll their eyes at that.  “Nine times clerical error?”  If the Ethics Committee investigation reveals evidence (physical or testimonial) that Plocher was knowingly skimming off a bit for himself, the “want distraction over” crowd plus the “anti-drama” caucus will lose their patience.

So, as you might expect, we’ll see….

1 Big Thing: Ethics Timeline

It’s very likely that the Ethics Committee investigation will be active into next session.

For starters, it’s important to note that the process for the Ethics Committee is extraordinarily vague.  The committee, and the chair in particular, are given a very wide berth to proceed with any complaint as they see fit.  That’s because the situations they confront are so diverse; they need to be able to be flexible in how they’re best handled.

Many complaints are never investigated by the committee.  They don’t rise to that level. A conversation occurs, and there’s a stern warning and that’s it.

It would appear, but we don’t know, that the committee will be investigating this complaint.  And while everyone seems to want a speedy resolution, the logistics of an investigation mean that this will likely drag into next year.  It simply going to be hard to schedule all the committee members to come together – they all have their own schedules, coming from across the state, with the end-of-the-year holidays – and hear testimony from witnesses and then deliberate before the end of the year.

·       Having the Ethics Committee investigation ongoing and looming during next session is obviously not great for Plocher or Republicans as they enter an election year.

Independence Ammo Plant in the Spotlight

Front page above the fold of the Sunday New York Times was a big long story about the Lake City Army Ammunition. Read it here.

·       Built during World War II, the federal site, in Independence, Mo., has made nearly all the rifle cartridges used by the U.S. military since it pulled out of Vietnam… The plant, operated by a private contractor with Army oversight, is now one of the country’s biggest manufacturers of commercial rounds for the popular AR-15…

·       As military demand has slowed, billions of rounds have been sold commercially… Starting in 2012 with the massacre of 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., the rounds have been tied to at least a dozen mass shootings involving AR-15-style guns, including at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis — and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The availability to consumers of rifle cartridges made at an Army site is the fruit of a symbiotic relationship between the Defense Department and the ammunition industry… When the military needs ammunition, the contractor is required to make it, but it is otherwise free to keep production lines humming with commercial operations…The trade-off for ordinary Americans is that commercial ammunition for the AR-15 is being manufactured in large quantities on government property with little or no public accountability as to how it is marketed and sold.

Lake City is represented by Sen. John Rizzo and Rep. Aaron McMullin.

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