Finally we can dispense with the regular talk about how GOP Senate President Mike Gibbons isn't quite as bad as all the rest of his reprobate Republican colleagues in the General Assembly.

Truth is, this ridiculous "Gibbons-as-reasonable-moderate" trope has survived for far too long anyway. It should have been recognized as a mischaracterization of the most egregious sort long before it died its official, clinical death when Gibbons rammed repressive Photo ID legislation through the Senate last night.

Yet for some reason, many Missourians --including some who really should know better-- cling like nervous children to a mother's hand to the increasingly untenable notion that Gibbons represents the last, best hope that bipartisan detente is still possible inside the capitol. Perhaps for them, Gibbons' perpetration of the procedural equivalent of legislative rape in the wee hours of this morning will serve as a wake-up call.

The defenders of the moderate Gibbons theme invariably point to his "no today, yes tomorrow" equivocation on legalization of concealed handguns as evidence that he's "not as extreme" as the Republicans who made conceal and carry a conservative jihad. Or they point to Gibbons' supposed willingness to make deals with traditional political opponents --even after he crawfished on a supposed 2005 "compromise" with labor regarding changes to workers' compensation laws. There always seems to be someone around to note approvingly that Gibbons "didn't really want" to oversee whatever piece of regressive policy he just helped force through.

But that game is over now.

By using the tactic of moving the previous question ("the PQ") to end debate and force a vote on legislation that would require a state-issued photo ID to vote in the state, Gibbons effectively forfeits any claim to the misbegotten "moderate" label that people have stuck to him for years.

Moderates do not strip away willy-nilly the right to vote from old folks and disabled simply because they don't have the correct nickel-piece of laminated plastic. Centrists do not sacrifice legitimate policy on the altar of marginal advances in partisan electoral gain. Reasonable, thoughtful legislators do not change the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of Missourians by shutting off debate and calling a vote at 1:30am in hopes that yet another personal act of legislative thuggery will be regarded with minimal notice. These are the tricks of extremists.

So whatever hopeful notion Gibbons once harbored about being regarded as a Jack Danforth is today and forever an ambition deferred. Instead he's merely another Kinder or Crowell, standing at the far right edge of the world, hammering away with whatever tactics are necessary to see that his extreme view is the only one afforded expression.

There's no debate; GOP Moderate Mike Gibbons died late last night, if he ever lived at all.