After having managed to rebuke him months ago, grassroots conservatives in Texas House Speaker Joe Straus’ home county are looking to take drastic action against the Speaker for his outright obstruction of the Republican Party of Texas platform under Rule 44.
Months ago, grassroots conservatives in Straus’ home county of Bexar seized a rare window of opportunity and passed an organic resolution calling for new leadership in the Texas House due to Straus’ consistent obstruction of conservative reforms.
Now, the Bexar County Republican Party Executive Committee has drafted an official rule of censure under Rule 44 which – if successful – will be forwarded to the State Republican Party Executive Committee to be adopted as a statewide rebuke of the Speaker.
It’s a rarely used nuclear option reserved for only the most severe instances of an elected official demonstrably out of touch with the Republican Party and Texas voters in general. The official resolution is over three pages long and goes into excruciating detail on Straus’ betrayal of the conservative values his Republican label ostensibly represents.
Straus has long been at odds with conservatives. He has appointed cronies of both parties to key committees in a deliberate effort to kill GOP-favored conservative reforms session after session. It wasn’t until this 2017 session that this dichotomy was so effectively highlighted. His blatant obstructionism has put him at direct odds with the conservative agenda of his own political party, and the issues championed by Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Those differences reached a fever pitch during the special legislative session when Straus not only referred to much of Abbott’s agenda as ‘horse manure,’ but he called for adjournment a day early and single-handedly killed many of those items.
Now a growing number of Republicans – even those in his own home county – are seeing the light and realizing his coalition has been the reason conservative items never reach the governor’s desk.
It’s important to note here that savvy politicians seek to maintain a loyal base of supporters in their home county – especially amongst their party’s committee members. For quite some time this was the case in Bexar, where many of Straus’ close friends – including Bexar GOP Chair Robert Stovall – have dominated the party and kept it (at least in the official sense) loyal to Straus and his regime.
But conservatives have had enough – and they’re mobilizing in grand fashion.
If the Bexar County Republican Party Executive Committee affirms this new three-page resolution, it will be passed on for statewide adoption and the Straus regime’s reign of betraying conservatives will be one step closer to ending.
Barring county leadership’s oppression of the resolution, the Executive Committee will vote on the resolution in their October 9 meeting.
