PAUL HAMPTON: The week Mississippi lawmakers finally caught up to Congress

Feb. 25 won't go down in history as one of the Republicans' better days.

As the GOP presidential hopefuls were "debating," the MSGOP was having a time of it in the House, where it controls a super majority of seats.

They have to stop calling these things debates and go with name that better describes the action on stages. The phrase Last Call at the Frat Party comes to mind.

My favorite screen capture of the debate came from someone who was wise enough to turn on the closed captioning. It shows the three main perpetrators -- Marco Rubio, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz -- and the caption [unintelligible yelling].

And when it was intelligible: choke artist ... liar ... could somebody attack me please.

Then there was Ohio Gov. John Kasich, "the adult in the room" with a plan that doesn't involve the words stupid and idiot. Hope you didn't blink because CNN wasn't about to risk its Trumpesque ratings for a serious policy discussion.

The day after the media was aglow with the news that Marco Rubio "won" the debate. Here's what that means. The GOP power brokers, their power running on backup batteries, have decided Rubio is the person who could bump off Donald Trump, the fellow skulking around GOP headquarters with a tanker trunk of diesel and a lit match.

I didn't see anything that knocked Trump off his game -- yelling unintelligibly louder than his rivals -- or seriously cut into his poll leads in Tuesday's primaries. Even the New York Times article "How Trump Can Win, and How Rubio Can Stop Him" on Friday said Rubio needs his home state of Florida for that to happen. In a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday, Trump led by double digits in Florida. And Friday, he was endorsed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Oh, a lot can happen between now and Florida. The arrival of an as-yet undetected meteor, for example. Just don't try to reason with the blindingly angry portion of the electorate that Trump owns.

Angry. Which brings us back to the Mississippi Legislature, which on Thursday finally caught up with America. For several years, we've been laggards. Republicans, in fact, were happy to report that unlike Congress and the president, the Legislature has been able to get things done.

Until Thursday.

The day before, the House voted to move Simpson County from the Southern Supreme Court District to the Central District. Democrats, particularly Black Caucus members, were livid, saying that move hurt blacks' chances at winning a seat.

It does strike me as an odd time to redistrict -- four years out from the next big census.

Then on Thursday, the Democrats insisted on having bills read. Gasp.

I guess my mind is failing because I would have sworn that Republicans had been known to gripe about voting on unread bills.

I know. I know.

This is different. This was a stalling tactic. Nobody was listening to the bills being read.

We're not in D.C. yet, but we are somewhere near Falls Church, Va. But hang on, the train is picking up speed.

Then, the House Republicans voted to end speeches on points of personal privilege, which Speaker Phil Gunn said was de facto filibustering. Lawmakers, he said, still would be able to ask questions and offer amendments on the House floor.

But he could do nothing to stop their demands that bills be read -- other than have them read by a machine set to chipmunk speed. Gunn said reading a single, albeit lengthy, bill took more than seven hours Thursday.

And since the deadline for a lot of those bills is Thursday, a lot of GOP legislation was in danger.

So Gunn compromised and gave the Democrats something like a seat at the table -- and some office space and staff and softened some on the personal privilege rule.

"Democracy worked," House Democratic leader David Baria said afterward.

So for now, our lawmakers have avoided becoming just like the kids in Congress.

Contact Paul Hampton, politics editor of the Sun Herald, at 896-2330 or jphampton@sunherald. Twitter:@jpaulhampton

This story was originally published February 27, 2016 at 7:04 PM with the headline "PAUL HAMPTON: The week Mississippi lawmakers finally caught up to Congress ."