Calling in an airstrike on your position may be a desperate military tactic, but Republican state Rep. Bob McDermott has successfully devolved the strategy by essentially calling in a M1 Abrams tank brigade to repeatedly crush his own position.

There are only seven Republicans in the state House. In their glory days of 2000-2001, there were 19. McDermott wanted to shred the GOP’s only glimmer of political power.

In the last two years, the House GOP has played a role in organizing the House, by first offering to link up with former House Speaker Calvin Say’s Democrats, and then last year actually entering into a coalition with the new Democratic speaker, Rep. Joe Souki.

In return for their seven votes, the GOP was given three vice chairmanships. That’s not enough political power to move legislation, but it is enough to get you inside the back rooms and a chance to argue your point of view.

It is also much more than the miniscule GOP could have won alone by giving tub-thumping speeches.

Earlier this week, McDermott tried to get the House to vote down the coalition, repeatedly introducing resolutions to take away his fellow Republicans’ vice chairmanships.

"Despite the mutual respect that coalition members continue to have for one another, this dissolution is necessary because the coalition has fallen woefully short as to the positive institutional change it could have accomplished in its first year," McDermott said in a resolution.

In a floor speech, McDermott trained his fire on his GOP leader Aaron Ling Johanson, saying that the GOP was so divided "the only time he (Johanson) spoke to me was to save his own hide. We have a problem — your minority."

The attack prompted GOP Rep. Beth Fukumoto to leave the floor in protest.

Earlier, former GOP leader Rep. Gene Ward cast a wide net of derision.

"Your caucus is divided, Mr. Speaker, my caucus is divided, and the faith community is divided," Ward said, before he was gaveled out of order and threatened with being removed from the floor if he continued to talk.

If coalitions are inherently unstable, Ward had put his finger on the House coalition’s unsteadiness over the upcoming vote on gay marriage. A majority of Democrats support it, and only one Republican favors it: Rep. Cynthia Thielen. The Democrats who lost out in the power struggle with Souki are willing to make a bit of petulant mischief by siding with McDermott’s attempt to blow up the coalition.

The major thing the special session is supposed to accomplish is the passage of a bill allowing gays to marry in Hawaii. For that to happen, the bill must be approved by the Judiciary committees in both the House and Senate before it goes to the floor for final votes in both chambers.

Democrats with their eyes on the prize were watching the House Judiciary. There was shuffling in committee assignments when Rep. Karen Awana was replaced by Rep. Rida Cabanilla as Democratic floor leader. Cabanilla lost her position on Judiciary, and House leaders didn’t want Awana on Judiciary because she is expected to vote against the same-sex bill, so they put in Rep. Denny Coffman, expected to be a safe "yes" vote.

So McDermott, the most vocal gay marriage opponent in the House, knew he might leverage the committee vote if he could get Thielen off Judiciary, even if it meant dynamiting the coalition to do so.

The tactic didn’t work, because Souki, along with House leaders Reps. Scott Saiki and Sylvia Luke, had a strategy already mapped out.

After the skirmish, Democrat Rep. Sharon Har, who opposed Souki and gay marriage, had to admit that "Saiki, Luke and Souki collectively have too many years on the GOP new leaders (a total of 65 years of legislative experience), they eat children like that for breakfast."

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com