First Things First: Corral Willie Brown : Punishing turncoat Horcher isn’t as important as a unified GOP electing a new Speaker.

The political enmity heaped on the turncoat Paul Horcher, who reregistered as an independent and threw the Republicans’ one-seat Assembly majority into a 40-40 tie, masks the loss of a tremendous opportunity to change the direction of California’s future.

The importance of the Assembly speakership and majority status in a representative, democratically elected government such as ours is not well understood. Unfortunately, the civics and political science courses taught in our schools and colleges bear little resemblance to the real world of politics.

When each new Congress or state legislative body convenes after an election, there literally are no laws, rules or authority, internal or external, to set the new body in motion so it can do the public’s business. The first thing the elected members must do is the most important thing they will ever do: elect a Speaker to lead the house. Who that Speaker is and what the majority is that installed the leader has a tremendous impact on our economy, our culture, our freedom and the way we live.

The first act of the Speaker is to return to the Assembly and set the rules under which it will operate. The majority that elected the Speaker approves the rules made by the Speaker. The power rests with that majority; how the minority chooses to vote makes no difference.

Since the Speaker makes all the rules and appoints all the committees and their chairs, allocates budgets and staff and assigns all the offices and equipment, it is little wonder that the first vote for Speaker has an effect on the behavior of every legislator, Democrat and Republican.

In the political game in which the leader makes the rules, a powerful Speaker like Willie Brown can (and did, for the past 14 years) prevent the opposition party from having any power. Less than 12% of all bills passed each year had Republican authors and less than 2% of the really important bills were carried by Republicans.

As the minority party, the Assembly Republicans have voted almost as a bloc against nearly 80% of the legislation passed out of the Assembly by the majority party.

There has been no real reform allowed by the Speaker on taxes or government over-regulation, even though our state’s economy has been mired in a devastating recession for nearly four years. We cannot reform welfare, education and tort liability or rein in the business-busting air-quality czars because the Speaker and his majority members are owned by the public-employee unions and the tort lawyers. These are the strongest special interests in the state as measured by their campaign contributions, so much of which go to Democrats that these two lobbies are virtual appendages of the Democratic Party.

California, sitting on the Pacific Rim, has a fantastic economic opportunity in its future. We cannot really take advantage of that opportunity unless and until our state Legislature adopts abrupt and important changes similar to those promised by the “Contract With America� adopted by Republicans in Congress under Newt Gingrich.

The Republican Assembly members’ first vote in Sacramento Wednesday is far more important than whether Paul Horcher should be tarred and feathered or drawn and quartered. It is absolutely critical, however, that the 40 Republicans remain together and dedicated to electing a Republican Speaker.

Unless and until they do, California will languish behind in an economic and educational malaise, victimized both by criminals and bureaucrats, while our taxes are squandered and wasted by our government.

That first vote to elect a new Speaker really is crucial to us all.