Grassroots America – We the People PAC, the largest all-volunteer constitutional conservative citizens group in Texas, announces its opposition to Dade Phelan for Texas House Speaker. We also strongly oppose the orchestrated secret meeting allegedly taking place this weekend that excludes some Republican House members. Such an approach does nothing to raise a higher standard for Republican leadership.

We strongly agree with Republican Party of Texas Chairman Allen West that House Republicans need to build trust going into the 87th Session—trust that was badly damaged during the 86th legislative session with most conservative members exhibiting a fiercely blind, dogged allegiance to self-disgraced Speaker Dennis Bonnen. They rode their loyalty to Bonnen all the way through the session to end up with an epic legislative fiasco—the resounding failure to fully pass any of the five Republican Party of Texas legislative priorities.

We need a Speaker who is committed to changing the culture of the Texas House. We need a Speaker who will not put Democrats and liberal Republicans in charge of committees as a means of stopping key reforms in a Republican Party of Texas Platform that is resoundingly approved over and over again by grassroots delegates. We need a Speaker who can tell the difference between right and wrong, a Speaker who will not look the other way when one of his committee chairs commits a crime. A Texas House Speaker should not lie and cheat—nor tolerate anyone who does.

Dade Phelan—a Bonnen loyalist—praised cocaine-dropping Democrat Chairman of the Texas House Homeland Security & Public Safety Committee Poncho Nevárez after the scandal was made public by Daniel Greer of Direct Action Texas. Dade Phelan is a liberal/progressive Republican, rating only moderate his first session and steadily lurching left on the Mark Jones lib-con scale from Rice University Rankings, as well as on the Fiscal Responsibility Index and the Young Conservatives of Texas ratings.

Dade Phelan—as chairman of the House State Affairs Committee—worked with Democrats to kill legislation that would have prevented local governments from micromanaging private businesses. Take that Big Gov’t stance and pair it with Phelan’s record of inserting “nondiscrimination” riders to bills to appease LGBT activists, and it is easy to see where Phelan will take the Texas House as Speaker. After all, Phelan received a positive grade from Equality Texas, a pro-LGBT advocacy organization. Phelan is Dennis Bonnen 2.0. Phelan is wrong for Speaker, and he’s wrong for Texas.

Liberty is losing in Texas, and big, dream-destroying, pocket-picking, Nanny State Government is winning.

Texans of today and tomorrow cannot afford the Austin Cartel’s engineered leftward steering of Republicans—a drifting that became a full-scale Democrat-lite purple lurch in the 86th Session. Governor Abbott’s escalation of the Nanny State and his neutering of the Texas Legislature during the ongoing 2020 COVID-19 social experiment has landed Texas in a constitutional crisis, which now includes the Texas Supreme Court.

Justice John Devine is the only member of the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court opposing the Court’s refusal to address the constitutionality of the governor’s overreaching executive orders. When all three branches of state government ignore the Texas Constitution, friends—we have a crisis.

That crisis does not need compounding with a backroom deal-making group of Republican House members who choose a Speaker that does not represent Texas conservative values. Instead, we need a higher standard in the Texas House Republican Caucus. Dade Phelan does not represent a higher standard! Anyone who supports Phelan for House Speaker signals to the conservative grassroots that they agree with backroom deals and have become willing accomplices in the long-range plan to hand Texas over to Democrats. Phelan support is a declaration of war on the Republican Party of Texas and its conservative grassroots army.

This is a commentary republished with the author’s permission. If you wish to submit a commentary to Texas Scorecard, please submit your article to submission@texasscorecard.com.

JoAnn Fleming

JoAnn Fleming is the executive director of Grassroots America – We the People.

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