Speaker's Race: 44 Texas House Republicans (Basically) Pledge Against Joe Straus

by: Phillip Martin, Progress Texas

Mon Apr 12, 2010 at 00:44 PM CDT

I wanted to build off of Matt's excellent post today ("Texas House and Senate Republicans Pander to Far Right, Launch New GOP Organization") by emphasizing what he put in his update. Jason Embry, with the Austin American-Statesman, made the following observation about the newly launched group:

With a handful of exceptions, the House members who joined Patrick’s group are not heavy-lifters under GOP Speaker Joe Straus. And most of the key lawmakers who helped elect Straus — Reps. Jim Pitts, Dan Branch, Burt Solomons, Charlie Geren, Jim Keffer, among others — aren’t on the list. Neither is Straus.

Embry quoted Patrick as basically challenging any moderate Republican:

He also seemed to indicate that the group would have little tolerance for moderate Republicans.

“If you’re a Republican and you can’t stand for those five core principles and you’re not proud to stand for those core principles, then we’ve got a problem,” Patrick said.

As the website states, membership to join the group is invitation-only. Which means that Speaker Joe Straus and others would not be invited or welcome to join Senator Dan Patrick and the far-right Republicans who are part of this organization. They are basically declaring themselves a separate group from the other House Republicans in their party.

Therefore, I can only conclude that the 44 House Republicans are -- in effect -- signing a pledge card against Speaker Joe Straus with their decision to join an exclusive, "no moderates allowed" conservative organization that does not include him. Unless a reporter can ask one of these Republicans why they left their Speaker out, and we hear something different, what else is there to conclude?

Here's the list of the 44 House Republicans who, through this group, have effectively signed pledge cards against Speaker Straus:

For more information on this, check out Peggy Fikac's post at the Houston Chronicle, and Aman Batheja's post at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.