Censuring of Straus a ridiculous move by extremists in state GOP

This past weekend, the Republican Party of Texas formally censured Joe Straus, the speaker of the Texas House.

The decision, which was made by the State Republican Executive Committee, is one that Republicans will surely come to regret. It’s also one that all Texans, regardless of their views on Straus, should find alarming. I’ll confess that I didn’t, at first. What the SREC did struck me as a ludicrous display of malice directed at one of the party’s most respected public servants. But that’s what many Republicans seem to be into, these days. And because Straus is retiring at the end of this year, censuring him has no practical consequences. It’s just a symbolic display of spite, which might help hasten the political transition that’s already underway — in part because it’s become increasingly hard to ignore the fact that the Republican Party of Texas has effectively been hijacked by extremists.

What’s empowered those extremists, for the most part, is cowardice on the part of today’s Republican leaders in the state. Straus is one of the few left, apparently, who can stand up to bullies. By contrast, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have taken to insisting that “liberal billionaire” George Soros is the only person bullying Texas, and that they deserve our support for their courageous efforts to stand up to him.

I sympathize with our state government’s two most powerful leaders, to an extent; fundraising was probably easier in 2014, when the available scapegoats included Wendy Davis, Barack Obama and Battleground Texas.

But what empowered Straus’ critics, in this case, was a rule that was added to the Republican Party of Texas platform in May 2016.

According to Rule 44, any Republican officeholder who takes three or more actions “in opposition to the core principles of the Republican Party of Texas defined in the preamble of the

Party Platform” during the course of a given biennium can be punished for it.

In fairness, it is true that Straus didn’t completely abandon his own principles last year, even though many of his fellow Republicans had done so, and some of them were calling on him to do so, while simultaneously counting on him not to.

“Disgusted by all this’

The most dramatic example came as a result of Abbott’s decision to call for a “bathroom bill” regulating the access of transgender people to public bathrooms, at the beginning of the 85th Legislature. Patrick, needless to say, quickly seconded the call. Straus, by contrast, opposed the effort from the outset. And eventually, by his own account, he singlehandedly thwarted a measure that surely would have delivered an economic hit to Texas, among other things. In May, when two of Patrick’s stooges brought a revised version of the proposal to his office, Straus refused to even humor them by reading it.

By that point, as Straus later told The New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright, he was “disgusted by all this.”

So were many Texans, of course. Patrick, intriguingly, seemed to realize that. By the end of the regular session, the Republican most committed to defending the Senate’s bathroom bill was its author, Lois Kolkhorst.

But personally, I wasn’t surprised when Abbott revived the bathroom issue by including it among his 20 priorities for the special session. The governor knew, at that point, that the business community was opposed to passing such legislation, and for very good reasons. He also knew that any concerns its leaders might have raised with his office about his decision to call for one could be dismissed, if not allayed.

After all, business leaders had already chipped in for Abbott’s re-election campaign. Very generously, in fact. Some of them, I suspect, had been worried that Abbott might face a primary challenge from Patrick. And, in any case, those who opposed the bathroom bill had nothing to worry about. Straus had already made it clear that any such proposal would be scuttled in the Texas House.

Even more alarming

All of which helps explain why the SREC’s decision to censure Straus is more alarming than it initially appears.

The speaker was effectively censured for doing things that his colleagues in state government nominally disagree with, but were clearly depending on him to do.

And Rule 44, the mechanism used to censure Straus, is one that can be used against literally any Republican officeholder, for literally any reason, including simple malice. The process, as laid out in the platform, requires a pretext. But those aren’t hard to come up with.

And once a motion to censure is put forward, the merits of the claim are irrelevant; the question, per Rule 44, is decided by a twothirds vote.

On Monday, the Republican Party of Texas acknowledged as much, in a news release noting that the votes cast by Chairman Jim Dickey and Vice Chair Amy Clark “do not necessarily represent their personal views on this matter.”

Dickey and Clark are the two SREC members who committed the party to censuring Straus. The motion passed, 44-19, after they clinched it, by casting the final two votes.

Punishing the righteous

Political parties are private organizations, of course. Republicans who hold office in the Texas GOP get to decide if they’re happy with Rule 44. There are some in the grass roots, from what I hear, who want to tinker with it at the state convention this summer, because they think it should be easier to punish Republican officeholders who fail to do their bidding, or that the next ones they target should face more severe consequences.

But Republicans who hold office in Texas should understand that they can be targeted just as easily as Straus.

And all Texans should understand that the Republicans marked for censure will be the ones who deserve it least, because Rule 44 is a mechanism that the state party came up with to punish Republican officials like Straus — the ones who are actually committed to working for the Texans they represent, rather than the self-pitying grass roots.

If they pull it off, the Legislature will finally be free to tackle the “conservative” priorities Straus mysteriously managed to deprive us of, over and over again. A bathroom bill. Vouchers. Constitutional carry. A ban on all abortions, from the moment of conception.

Most Texans, of course, are against all of those things. And it would be nice to know where Abbott and Patrick, who have been hiding behind Straus, actually stand.