OCEAN ISLE BEACH – David Rice, the indefatigable Raleigh reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal, had an interesting piece Thursday about something that’s been the buzz around the state capital for weeks: an improbable, and for that reason rather striking, show of unity by the Republican caucus in the North Carolina House.

The GOP split first arose back in the 1990s, when it was both philosophical (conservatives vs. moderates) and personal (the friends vs. the foes of former House Speaker Harold Brubaker, and later of Rep. Richard Morgan). It became a fissure during 2002, when Brubaker and Morgan opposed a lawsuit filed by Republican leaders against a Democratic gerrymander of legislative districts (the two argued that, whatever the maps’ flaws, it was better for the General Assembly not to invite judicial intervention into legislative prerogatives).

Then in early 2003, the fissure trigged a political earthquake. After GOP candidates won a slim 61-59 majority under new maps drawn for the 2002 elections, former Rep. Michael Decker switched parties, joined the Democrats, and gave Morgan the opportunity to become co-speaker with Democrat Jim Black. A handful of Republicans joined the coalition, most either freshmen or bearing a grudge against former House Majority Leader Leo Daughtry.

Still with me?

The Black-Morgan alliance wasn’t exactly 50-50. Democrats controlled the major committees and more or less set the agenda. Morgan was able to wield what amounted to a veto on the consideration of bills he particularly disliked, such as a state-run lottery, but at the price of delivering Republican votes for state budgets in 2003 and 2004 that relied on more than a billion dollars of new or extended tax increases.

There was a price to pay for these votes. Republicans either allied to Morgan or endorsing the tax increases ran in 18 House primaries against Republicans, some incumbents and other challengers, who opposed the co-speakership and its fiscal-policy outcome. In a majority of the cases, the more conservative, anti-Morgan candidates prevailed. Even in races where they didn’t, the GOP nominees got a pretty good scare – including Morgan himself, who turned back a spirited primary challenge from a Republican neophyte by just a couple hundred votes.

Now it’s 2005, and as Rice explained in his piece, there seems to be a new-found unanimity among House Republicans. All voted against the Democrats’ latest round of tax hikes (or intended to, with Rep. Debbie Clary saying her lone GOP vote for the package was a slip of the finger).

Are some of the wayward Republicans voting this way because they are trying to avoid another costly primary challenge in 2006? Or are they disenchanted with their votes for the 2003 and 2004 budgets, which promised “temporary” taxes that aren’t and spending restraint that wasn’t.

Does it matter?

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.