Around politics, everyone wants to be considered an “insider.” While they might have the inside track on the gossip in Austin sewer or D.C. swamp, they are—usually—woefully out of touch with reality.
This point was driven home recently when I came upon a reference to a series of surveys conducted more than a decade ago by the George Soros-funded Texas Tribune. They had a bipartisan collection of lobbyists, campaign consultants, Capitol staffers, washed-up politicians, and news reporters who would be surveyed on various topics. They called it “Inside Intelligence.”
It should have been titled “Insider Delusions.”
When asked who these consummate political gatekeepers said would emerge victorious in the 2014 race for Lieutenant Governor, they were confident Todd Staples would prevail. Who is he? He was a moderate Republican lawmaker who is now an Austin lobbyist. In that 2014 GOP contest, he didn’t make the runoff.
Two years earlier, the insiders were confident that David Dewhurst would be promoted to the U.S. Senate and Warren Chisum would be a member of the Texas Railroad Commission. Neither happened. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of either man; Texans went with Ted Cruz and Christi Craddick.
The same group was certain that Jeb “Please Clap” Bush would be the GOP presidential standard bearer in 2016. They loved ObamaCare, were soft on illegal aliens, and consistently gave high marks to leftwing House Speaker Joe Straus.
It is not so much that they were wrong but that the insiders were always so completely off-kilter from the clearly divined wishes and wisdom of real Texans.
After several years’ worth of embarrassingly bad takes from their stable of “insiders,” the Soros media group put the feature out to pasture.
Armed with the latest gossip from the Capitol echo chamber, political insiders then and now exude a hubris that comes from listening to a very narrow group of people. The professional sycophants remain purposefully disconnected from the people of Texas. They presume to know what is best for the rest of us.
Take the lobby group Texans for Lawsuit Reform. They are the chief proponents of keeping Democrats chairing committees in the Texas House, lecturing both lawmakers and their donors that real Texans don’t care that a GOP-dominated chamber isn’t delivering on the priorities of the GOP-dominated state.
Sadly, too many lawmakers, once elected, stick their heads in the echo chamber of their legislative body only to emerge with muddled minds.
Years ago, an influential (and now former) Republican member of the Texas Senate was furious that citizens were speaking out against his budget schemes. He derisively called the taxpayers of Texas “outside forces” and bemoaned the fact that his colleagues were paying attention to them.
The insiders don’t like when the peasants and the peons start speaking up.
The challenge for us in the rabble is to ensure our voices are heard over the din of their self-serving echo chamber. While an entire industry in our state and federal capitals is dedicated to divorcing elected officials from reality, those of us on the outside must not let them get comfortable.
As a self-governing people, we must not let politicians and their insider cronies live under the delusion that they possess the moral or intellectual capacity to do what is “good” for us. As citizens, we must remind them—daily, if necessary—that they were hired to do what we want under the Constitution.
