Paul and I talk about whether the D’s are really poised to take the Texas House, possible toss-up seats, and who skunked who. (Paul’s term, not mine.) One reason to watch this video? To check out the weird Star Trek-like outfit I’m wearing. (Personally, I thought it looked like a ski chalet sweater but then I saw it on the video.)

To make matters worse, I didn’t even realize the Harper-Brown/Romano race was still in court, and then I try to recover by pursing my lips. Twenty votes?! Classic.

Honorably mentioned: Linda Harper-Brown, Bob Romano, Dwayne Bohac, Ginny McDavid, Ken Legler, Joel Redmond.

My colleague and friend Patricia Kilday Hart has written an excellent story about the speaker’s race that appears in the November 28 issue of the Texas Observer. (We will have competing stories, as I have “written” one that will appear in our January issue. You will see why “written” is in quotes when the issue comes out around a week from now.) In her story, Hart writes, “Now Democrats are poised to win back control of the House at the close of the decade, just in time for the next round of legislative redistricting.” This made me wonder: Are the Democrats “poised to win back control of the House?” Or are they approaching their high-water mark?

Here’s the list of all House seats won by Republicans, with district number, opposition (U = unopposed, L = libertarian only, D = Democrat only, DL = Democrat and Libertarian), and percentages of R and D candidates. Races in bold-face indicate potential swing districts. My comments follow the list.

2 — Flynn, L
4 — B. Brown, DL, 63.61 - 35.17
5 — Hughes, U
6 — Berman, L
7 — Merritt, L
8 — B. Cook, U
9 — Christian, DL, 62.75 - 35.39
10 - Pitts, L
13 - Kolkhorst, U
14 - F. Brown, L
15 - Eissler, U
16 - Creighton, U
17 - Kleinschmidt, DL, 53.99 - 42.84
18 - Otto, 65.43, D, 68.54 - 31.45
19 - Hamilton, DL, 63.92 - 33.98
20 - Gattis, DL, 64.70 - 30.52
24 - Taylor, L
25 - Bonnen, L
26 - C. Howard, U
28 - Zerwas, DL, 60.22 - 38.02
29 - Weber, D, 60.47 - 39.52
30 - Morrison, U
31 - Hunter, DL, 50.13 - 46.79
44 - Kuempel, L
53 - Hildebran, L
54 - Aycock, L
55 - Sheffield, DL, 53.92 - 43.38
56 - Anderson, L
57 - Orr, DL, 70.54 - 26.21
59 - S. Miller, DL, 61.64 - 35.80
60 - Keffer, D, 76.76 - 23.23
61 - P. King, DL, 72.52 - 24.19
62 - Phillips, D, 68.40 - 31.59
63 - Parker, DL, 72.97 - 22.65
64 - Crownover, DL, 56.95 - 39.39
65 - Solomons, L
66 - McCall, L
67 - Madden, L
68 - Hardcastle, U
70 - Paxton, L
71 - S. King, L
72 - Darby, L
73 - D. Miller, DL, 69.43 - 25.96
81 - Lewis, L
82 - Craddick, DL, 62.12 - 35.30
83 - Jones, U
84 - Isett, U
86 - Smithee, DL, 78.68 - 18.26
87 - Swinford, L
88 - Chisum, U
89 -Laubenberg, U
91 - Hancock, DL, 61.27 - 35.91
92 - T. Smith, D, 63.72 -36.27
94 - Patrick, L
97 - Shelton, DL, 55.33 - 42.57
98 - Truitt, DL, 70.42 - 26.64
99 - Geren, DL, 64.79 - 32.41
105 - Harper-Brown, DL, 48.72- 48.67 (still undecided)
108 - Branch, D, 60.60 - 39.39
112 - Button, DL, 56.06 - 39.64
113 - Driver, D, 58.50 - 41.49
114 - Hartnett, U
115 - Jackson, L
121 - Straus, L
122 - Corte, DL, 66.03-29.89
126 - Harless, DL, 59.40 - 38.41
127 - Crabb, DL, 65.64 - 32.29
128 - W. Smith, U
129 - Davis, D, 58.51 - 41.58
130 - Fletcher, L
132 - Callegari, L
135 - Elkins, DL, 58.39 - 39.94
136 - Woolley, L
138 - Bohac, D, 59.00 - 40.99
144 - Legler, D, 51.15 - 48.84
150 - Riddle, DL, 64.34 - 33.53

The most important thing about this list is that 40 of the 76 Republican seats were uncontested by Democrats.

Of the 36 contested seats, Republicans won 23 of these with more than 60% of the vote. This means that 63 of the 76 Republican seats are safe seats, unless something unforeseeable occurs, such as a scandal.

This leaves the Democrats with 13 seats to work with. Let’s take a look at them:

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Jack Rains, whom some may remember as a former Secretary of State during the Bill Clements years, sent this commentary by Rush Limbaugh to his (Rains’) e-mail list. It pertains to the county-by-county map of the election (click on image for full map). I will comment following Limbaugh’s observations.

You know, it’s interesting, I saw today the final county map, red state, blue state map by county, and if you just landed here from Mars, and you looked at that map, you would swear the Republicans won this thing in a landslide, if you didn’t know where the population centers are. I guarantee you by county and by square mileage, we skunked ‘em! But then you look at the coasts, you look all up and down the Left Coast, you look all up and down the East Coast, until you get past New Jersey and Maryland, DC, even Virginia, three counties in Virginia won it for Obama. Those three counties are microscopic on the map.

But it’s just amazing. The population centers feature big cities, of course, and people who live in big cities are largely Democrat, and I don’t know, for example, how many conservatives are going to want to move to a place like California. Look at the tax rate in California. How many conservatives who don’t already live there, want to move to New York? I mean, you need a great job, a lot of money to live there. Besides, conservatives don’t Balkanize themselves. They live their lives; they want to be happy and so forth.

Liberals are the ones that organize in little communes and cliques and cities and so forth and only want to hang around with each other and themselves. We’re not that way in many regards. In some parts of the country that happens to be the case, but this map is just stunning.

And I’ll tell you something else that’s stunning. If you look at the counties, what I call the Hispanic border states, you go up the border of Mexico with Texas, the only blue counties in Texas, other than one outside of Houston, are right on the border with Mexico, and then you go into New Mexico, same thing, go into Arizona, pretty close, same thing, you go to California, you can see the Hispanic vote. You can see where it’s gone. It’s all blue. Well, not all, but I mean, it’s just amazing.

* * * *

My response:

There is nothing amazing about this map. It is the inevitable result of the Republican party’s rigid adherence to faith-based and cultural values. Stem cell research is the canary in this coal mine. When the president of the United States imposes a religious-based restriction on the search for knowledge and scientific progress, he and his party have placed politics and ideology above the public interest. The governor of Texas has done the same. A party that cares more about doctrine than about governing points itself in the direction of irrelevance.

The map reflects what the Republican party has brought on itself. The GOP has become the party of rural America. The Democrats are the party of the cities. The division is not a neat one; the cities, after all, are populated by people who came from the countryside over several decades and brought their rural values with them. The antipathy of the countryside for the city is hardly new in American politics; it goes back to Jefferson, who believed that the yeoman farmer represented the American ideal. But the cities are where the voters are.

Cultural issues will always be with us; how we live and what we value are important politically as well as personally. I do not question their legitimacy. I do question their primacy—and so should Republicans. The three “G’s” (God, gays, and guns) cannot sustain a political party over the long haul. Sooner or later, you have to govern. The Bush administration failed in Iraq and failed in New Orleans, and the country lost faith in the administration’s leadership and competence.

The end of Limbaugh’s first paragraph is quite strange. “[C]onservatives don’t Balkanize themselves. They live their lives; they want to be happy….” “Balkanize” means to divide into ineffectual warring factions. So conservatives don’t balkanize themselves? How, then, do you explain the Republican base’s antipathy for anyone who shows independence—John McCain, for starters? Look at Texas, and the efforts to purge the so-called RINOs. As for conservatives wanting to be happy: Since when? Conservatives aren’t supposed to be happy. They’re supposed to be worried. What makes conservatives conservative is a dark view of human nature that leads them to fear change. William Safire, in his Political Dictionary, writes, “Abraham Lincoln called conservatism, ‘adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried.’”

More Rush: “Liberals are the ones that organize in little communes and cliques and cities and so forth and only want to hang around with each other and themselves.” Hmm…that sounds more like small towns to me. Everybody knows everybody else—and their secrets. What many people find attractive about cities is that you can, if you choose, be anonymous. You can shuck your past and re-invent yourself.

Finally, Rush found Hispanic support for Obama to be stunning. What did he expect? The Republican party has done everything possible to alienate Hispanics, from building a wall to breaking up families. Perhaps he ought to read the platform of the Republican Party of Texas on the subject of illegal immigration: “No amnesty! No how! No way!” No wonder the Hispanic vote in Texas was around 70% Democratic.

Burka and Eileen preview the legislative sunset: How does an agency “misplace” $1 billion? Or lose one-third of its criminal files? Or let the governor’s mansion get torched? Or screw Texas homeowners? Don’t get mad, get even.

Honorably mentioned: Steve Ogden, Lois Kolkhorst, John Carona, and Wayne Smith. Not so honorably mentioned: TxDOT, TYC, TDI, DPS, and Bob Perry.

One of my favorite web sites is Stratfor.com, a private, Austin- and Washington-based firm that specializes in geopolitical analysis. Yesterday’s analysis focused on Obama’s approach to governing. If that seems a trifle far from geopolitics, Stratfor points out that what Obama decides will impact a world that remains American-centric. Stratfor’s worldview is decidedly realist, rather than idealist. Its briefing paper sees Obama as primarily concerned with expanding his governing coalition to include hard Clinton supporters and soft McCain supporters to establish himself as a centrist. The last two paragraphs really nail it:

[R]egardless of what Obama might have thought his presidency would look like, it is being shaped not by his wishes, but by his response to external factors. He must increase his political base — and he will do that by reassuring skeptical Democrats that he can work with Hillary Clinton, and by showing soft McCain supporters that he is not as radical as they thought. Each of Obama’s appointments is designed to increase his base of political support, because he has little choice if he wants to accomplish anything else.

As for policies, they come and go. As George W. Bush demonstrated, an inflexible president is a failed president. He can call it principle, but if his principles result in failure, he will be judged by his failure and not by his principles. Obama has clearly learned this lesson. He understands that a president can’t pursue his principles if he has lost the ability to govern. To keep that ability, he must build his coalition. Then he must deal with the unexpected. And later, if he is lucky, he can return to his principles, if there is time for it, and if those principles have any relevance to what is going on around him. History makes presidents. Presidents rarely make history.

I am going to publish below an e-mail and corresponding op-ed that I received from Senator Eliot Shapleigh. It requires no explanation.

# # # #

This is Shapleigh’s letter to me:

I’ve read your recent pieces on major issues, including tuition. In my view you miss the point. After fifteen years of what the world now recognizes as the “Bush brand”, Texas is now firmly in “Grover’s Tub”. Your reporting misses the point because your world view can’t see over the Tub’s edge.

For years now, Grover Norquist has been the ideological father of the Bush-Perry-Craddick school of governance. His ideology—‘shrink government so small that we can then drown it in a bathtub’—has run Texas since Bush was first elected Governor.

Now, in agency after agency, tax cuts for the wealthy, incompetent leadership and irresponsible governance have created enormous challenges that will take Texans years to correct.

The question you pose about tuition de-regulation is in fact far deeper. Take the whole package—the Grover package—that is the issue. Tax cuts over kids, crony contracts over competence, polluters over regulators, predatory lenders over consumer protections—ask the question about that package, then measure where we are in every agency—not just at UT with tuition deregulation.

My response: I think everyone understands that Texas is a low-tax, low-services state. I don’t think it is fair or accurate to ascribe this state of affairs to the last 14 years. Democrats governed Texas much as Republicans are now doing. They didn’t pay much attention to environmental issues. They didn’t rein in lenders; in fact, they lifted restrictions on usury. The special interests almost always get their way. That was true when the Democrats were in charge and it is true when the Republicans are in charge. At least the lobby had to fight for what they could get when the Democrats ran the state. Now the leadership just lavishes them with goodies. The one thing Democrats did do differently than Republicans was raise taxes when the going got tough. They raised the gasoline tax and the sales tax and the franchise tax, and the world did not come to an end, and the economy did just fine.

I know that it suits Senator Shapleigh’s purpose to lump Bush in with Perry and Craddick, but the truth is that Bush went along with Democratic spending priorities when he was governor. I don’t recall that he ever vetoed a line item. Perry accurately, though unkindly, described him as a big spender.

Texas government is the way that it is because this is a conservative state, and there is little movement for change. The Republicans are in trouble because they have overreached in areas like tuition deregulation. Senator Shapleigh writes as if he hasn’t followed the election returns. The Republicans have paid dearly for their ideological zeal in the Perry/Craddick/Dewhurst years. Their brand is tarnished and they are losing ground in Texas.

I admire Eliot Shapleigh, and I think it is important that he reminds us of the shortcomings of state government. But it didn’t start with Perry/Craddick/Dewhurst, and state leaders through the years haven’t needed a Grover Norquist to discipline them into keeping this a low-tax, low-service state.

[Back to Shapleigh] Herein below is our recent OP ED piece on Texas Higher education. You should run it in your column.

In our view, the real question is what price has Texas paid for fifteen years of Bush—Perry—Craddick?

More importantly, what are Texans willing to do to change it?

# # # #

Let’s analyze core issues in higher ed. Take two plain vanilla Midwest America universities, each with 29,000+ students—call them Texas Tech and University of Iowa. Now, let’s look at state general revenue support over a decade. The difference between Iowa and Tech is $1.84B—that is billion–with a “B”. Basically, that’s why we have tuition deregulation.

Here’s some history—in 2003, Craddick killed the inheritance tax, then he gave unelected regents (most of whom are millionaires and direct beneficiaries of Craddick’s tax cuts) the right to tax students. Dollar for dollar, revenue from a tax paid only by millionaires was replaced with tuition hikes paid by students—all outside the control of lawmakers so Craddick’s supporters could go back to districts and run again on ‘no new tax’ pledges.

At UTEP tuition, fees, books and parking have risen 73% since 2003. Craddick and Company refuse to consider real revenue sources because long ago—they took Grover’s pledge and now refuse to engage in real governance.

In agency after agency, Texans now face the same issue presented by tuition deregulation—not enough money to take care of basic needs and not enough courage and leadership to fund those needs in an effective way.

Let’s do a quick tour: TXDOT is $86b in the hole. Craddick’s school finance plan has districts on the verge of Chapter 11. TCEQ is run by Baker Botts. At CPS, ½ the investigators quit every six months due to America’s lowest child investigator pay and highest investigator case loads; agency directors pay $4m fines to the feds rather than fund basic levels of investigators for kids.

At HHS, more Texans sit on some waiting lists than actually get served. Hawkins has paid a billion for the basic software program to [implement--added by pb] HB 2292, and it still doesn’t work. Perry’s mansion burned down because cameras quit working and DPS cut staff.

We are last in dropouts, first in air pollution; 48th in average SAT’s and 45th in home ownership. We are last in Texans who have health insurance. Seven Texas MSA’s rank among America’s top ten in volume of subprime second mortgages.

Here, on the streets of El Paso, vendors hawk payday loans on street corners that carry 1100% per annum interest rates. More than one in three in my hometown no longer have any health insurance.

In thirty years or so, Texas will be home to 50m Texans. Hispanics will long [have been] the majority. With current leadership and current values, ask your readers this question–are we even close to preparing for the next generation?

Are we even close to taking care of Texas today?

Is a tiny band from the far right now discredited everywhere but Austin, that has long valued tax cuts for the wealthy over good schools for kids responsible enough to continue governing Texas?

That’s the question in Craddick’s race—and every race for the next few years.

Senator Eliot Shapleigh

(more…)

This is from Mike Allen’s “Playbook”:

BREAKING: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports JIM STEINBERG will be DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE, barring unforeseen developments. She hears both Obama and Senator Clinton want it. Steinberg, deputy national security adviser for President Bill Clinton, is now dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.

It is well known around the LBJ School that Steinberg was likely to leave if there was a friendly Democratic administration. The appointment is likely to touch off a lively search for Steinberg’s successor. Republicans have long believed that the school is a retirement home for liberal politicians and academics. This attitude prevented former lieutenant governor (and University of Houston chancellor) Bill Hobby from getting serious consideration as dean — a great loss to the school. Given how deeply Rick Perry was involved in the search for A&M’s successor to Bob Gates, I would not be surprised to see him play a role in the selection of a new dean.

Here’s the problem for Tom Craddick. The House passed tuition deregulation in 2003 for one reason and one reason only: The speaker twisted Republicans’ arms to get the votes. Almost six years later, tuition and fees at Texas’s public university have risen by an average of 50%, according to Robert Garrett’s story in the Morning News today. The story focuses on a male student from Arlington and his fiance, a graduate student, who anticipate that they will enter the work force with a combined debt of $80,000.

Republican consultant Todd Smith told Garrett that among rank-and-file GOP lawmakers, “[T]here’s growing consternation over ‘runaway tuition.’” Smith had eight clients in this election cycle and all had to deal with the issue. “It’s now being felt by the Republican base and is touching middle-class families the hardest,” Smith told the Morning News. “It’s going to be hard to ignore their unhappiness.”

Not for Craddick. Garrett writes:

House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, backed the move to get the Legislature out of the tuition-setting business, and he sees no need to reverse that, said spokeswoman Alexis DeLee. Although Mr. Craddick “recognizes that tuition rates have increased substantially,” she said, he believes university officials “should take the lead in making schools’ financial decisions because they know what their individual institutions’ needs are.”

This is a familiar bind for Republican House members during the Craddick regime. Craddick asks them to vote against the interests of their constituents to support a policy he wants—in this case, Republican families in Harris and Dallas counties, a core constituency for affordable college education—and the issue comes back to haunt them at election time. The Democrats are not going to let the Republicans get out of this session without forcing a vote on this issue. Will Craddick allow members to rein in future tuition increases? Or will he continue to let tuition rise and get more Republican members defeated at the polls?

* * * *

Full disclosure: I have written in favor of tuition deregulation in the pages of Texas Monthly. I think higher education is critical to the future of the state, and it has been apparent for some time that the public education and health care are higher priorities for the Legislature. If lawmakers are not going to fund higher ed, and if you believe that Texas needs universities of the top rank, then tuition dereg is the only alternative.

I have had second thoughts about this for a long time. Tuition increases are squeezing the middle class out of UT and Texas A&M, as Patricia Kilday Hart made clear in a column she wrote for Texas Monthly. UT hiked tuition by a third the first chance that they got, knowing that once tuition rates began to soar, the Legislature could never afford, and would never attempt, to provide the revenue the universities need. What tuition dereg has done is exactly what the Legislature tried to do with highways: fund the service with debt. Only, in tuition, the debt is incurred by the student and his family. Tuition, like tolls, has become a user fee. I’m all for having first class universities, but not at the cost of a generation of debtors. More of the money from rising tuition should go for funding scholarships, and less to pay for administrators’ salaries.

How many readers realize that today, November 22, is the 45th anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination? It has been interesting to see time do its work on the collective memory. As recently as 1991, the assassination’s hold on the American imagination was sufficient to get the Hollywood treatment: Oliver Stone’s JFK, starring Kevin Costner as the New Orleans DA who tried to unravel the conspiracy, which included, in Stone’s telling, Lyndon Johnson. The late George Christian, LBJ’s former press secretary, was despondent after the film came out. He told me that it had sunk any chance that history would rehabilitate Johnson. Later, however, Harry Middleton, then the director of the Johnson Presidential Library, released Johnson’s White House tapes, which revealed Johnson’s political skill and his personal anguish over Viet Nam, and presidential historian Michael Beschloss edited them into two volumes. I think Johnson has a fair-to-middling chance to make the top ten list, especially after the Viet Nam generation is gone.

Like all Americans who were old enough to be aware of what was going on, I remember where I was when I learned what had happened. I had left law school to eat lunch at Tower Drug, on 29th street, just north of the University of Texas campus, and when I went to pay my check, the cashier, an Hispanic woman, was sobbing uncontrollably. “They shot the president,” she said.

I remember Kennedy as young, vibrant, and optimistic. Early in my senior year at Rice, he spoke at the football stadium and called for America to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Around twenty miles away, NASA was just gearing up. All things seemed possible. Who could have known that the decade would turn out to be one of the most tumultuous in American history, with riots in the urban ghettos, antiwar demonstrations in the streets, and revolutions ahead in sexual mores, drug usage, and the commonness of profanity, along with more lasting but less noticed trends such as the decline of industrial America and the rise of the Sunbelt, with great implications for American politics. On New Year’s Eve, I drove with two friends to Dallas for the Cotton Bowl game the next day between Texas and Notre Dame, which would decide the national championship. We pulled off the road to watch the sun go down and extinguish the decade whose likes, we knew, we would never see again.

In 1982, Ronald Reagan’s first mid-term election, a Democratic wave swept the state. Republicans had mounted a major challenge to the D’s control of most statewide offices (governor excepted), and U.S. senator Lloyd Bentsen and lieutenant governor Bill Hobby used their muscle to build the best Democratic organization Texas had seen since Lyndon Johnson’s heyday. The price of oil was falling, and the threat of a recession hung over the state and the nation. With the Bentsen/Hobby organization behind him, Mark White knocked off Republican governor Bill Clements; Bentsen and Hobby handily won reelection, and a group of downballot candidates benefited from the coattails.

One of them was Mattox, the newly elected attorney general. Another was Ann Richards, who was elected treasurer, a position that since has been merged with the comptroller. Garry Mauro was the new land commissioner. And Jim Hightower was agriculture commissioner. (Bob Bullock had been comptroller since 1974.) The liberal wing of the party was ecstatic; the downballot foursome were the first liberal Democrats elected statewide since Ralph W. Yarborough won reelection to the U.S. Senate in 1964.

Mattox served in the Legislature in the mid-seventies and was a floor leader for the liberal Democrats and a daily critic of Billy Clayton, the conservative Democratic speaker. He was an unabashed and unrestrained populist. In 1978 he won a congressional seat in Dallas, but 1981 was a congressional redistricting year, and his enemies in Austin (including Clayton and Governor Clements) drew him an unfavorable district in an attempt to get rid of him.

They thought that they had killed him off; instead, he ran for AG and won. He quickly earned a reputation as a hardball fundraiser and a bit of a knave when it came to ethics. One memorable story is that banking interests had asked for an attorney general’s opinion regarding, as I recall, branch banking, but when it was released, it was too ambiguous to be useful. Mattox sent word that he would clarify it if the banking interests would arrange for another request. The word came back (according to the story I heard at the time): “We can’t afford another opinion right now.”

Mattox always seemed to be involved in some sort of scrape. The Aggies had a rule that women could not play in the band, which was thrown out by a Houston federal court. Mattox refused to appeal the case, infuriating the Aggies. The regents sought to file their own appeal, and Mattox blocked them, saying that only he could represent a state agency in court. He made it stick. In a similar case, Mattox chose not to defend the constitutionality of the state’s sodomy statute after a Dallas court had declared it unconstitutional.

Mattox relished fights with the remnants of the old conservative power structure he had battled when he was a legislator. He styled himself “The People’s Lawyer.” He appeared to be indifferent to crossing ethical and legal lines. When he appeared to threaten the bond business of Fulbright and Jaworski (the AG has some regulatory authority over bond issues), Travis County DA Ronnie Earle indicted Mattox on the obscure charge of commercial bribery. He was acquitted. Another incident rife with impropriety was his alliance with South Texas power broker Clinton Manges, who was trying to have an old oil and gas lease on his ranch declared void; Manges was a major contributor to Mattox and the AG joined Manges’s side of the case, against Mobil Oil.

He was the kind of fighter who, when he drew his sword, threw away the scabbard. In 1990 he and former governor White (who had been defeated by Clements’ comeback in 1986) were in a three-way race with Ann Richards. Mattox accused Richards of using illegal drugs, and the issue came up during a televised Democratic primary debate for which I was a panel member. One of my co-panelists put the question to Richards. The tension in the small studio was unbelievable. I could feel it. Richards did not answer the question.

Ann looked into the camera and said something like, “I want to say something to all of you who may have made a mistake in your life. You can leave it behind you. You can take charge of your life.” She put her heart into that answer, as only Ann Richards could. She never did answer the question. Then it was White’s and Mattox’s turn to speak. Each gave the identical answer in the crackling silence: “I have never used illegal drugs.” Great drama.

(more…)

Honorably Mentioned: Burt Solomons, Jim Keffer, Craig Eiland, Brian McCall, Rafael Anchia, Charlie Geren, Warren Chisum, Phil King, and Rob Junell (naturally). If you do not see your name on the list, you have given us no reason to talk about you.

(Go watch it on our homepage so I don’t have to take your abuse by posting it here. And, no, I’m not wearing a white long-sleeved shirt. Those are my real alabaster arms.)

Caesar, beware of Brutus; take heed of Cassius; come not near Casca; have an eye to Cinna; trust not Trebonius; mark well Metullus Cimber; Decius Brutus loves thee not; thou hast wrong’d Caius Ligarius. There is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent against Caesar. If thou beest not immortal, look about you: security gives way to conspiracy. The mighty gods defend thee!

Putting on my best faux-reporter voice, I called Rep. Solomons to find out why he would be so crazy as to run for Speaker. I wanted to give him the opportunity that we gave to the other 140 candidates to send along an Official Declaration of Intent. Solomons noted that the statements we compiled pretty much sound the same, and he basically agrees with all of them.

Well he’s right about that. Each candidate thinks he or she would make the best Speaker. Not one of them said, you know, “I have no idea why I’m running, don’t look at me, I’m hideous,” which would have made for a much more interesting race.

Here’s what Solomons did have to say, according to my notes, which are scribbled on my hand. He says it’s all about management and governing style, and that he and Craddick have very different perspectives on that. He said that the House needs to change the process and the way they get results. He said he’s not trying to pull the rug out from anybody, but he thinks that it’s time for another Republican to govern.

Looks like some other members are thinking the very same thing.

I don’t think he’s going to be the last one to do it, either.

Solomons is the most serious threat to Craddick of the candidates filing thus far. Here’s why:

1. He’s a mainstream Republican. No one can accuse him of being an ABC or a RINO. A challenger who comes out of the mainstream of the GOP caucus will have much more credibility with the average Republican member than a candidate who is viewed as an ABC.

2. He’s a tough guy. His nickname isn’t “King” Solomons for no reason. He can be imperious when he needs to be. Members will remember the relentlessness with which he battled Phil King over PUC Sunset. You have to be tough to take on Craddick. You have to be willing to take a punch and to do the wet work. Solomons will stick the knife in if he gets the chance.

3. He knows the rules. If there is a battle over the rules on January 13, he can hold his own with Terry Keel.

4. He’s from Dallas. The Dallas business establishment is hungry for a speaker from Big D. The Dallas Morning News will promote his candidacy. Solomons is not the hale-fellow-well-met type, but then neither is Craddick.

The real question here is whether Solomons has any following. I don’t know the answer. I do know that the way to attract a following is to start with a following. You need to announce your candidacy by standing up with two or three other members who support you and can articulate why. What we have right now is a bunch of wannabes flying solo. That will not beat Tom Craddick.

This article appeared in the November 7 issue of The Lone Star Report. It was written by Will Lutz, who has covered state government for ten years. It is addressed, though not explicitly, to Republicans who are in denial about why they are losing ground in Texas and why they will continue to do so under the current leadership. It is reprinted with Mr. Lutz’s permission.

Since most Republican lawmakers go to church, they’ve probably sung the refrain, “On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.” It’s a hymn that kept going though my head as I watched the election results come in. The GOP has built its foundation on quicksand, and Tuesday, the voters told the GOP — nationally and in Texas — that they’ve had enough. The voters sent the same message in 2006 and it didn’t register with the GOP leadership. Perhaps the second time is the charm. The quicksand here is the Austin lobby, a handful of purely self-interested major campaign contributors, and large corporate bureaucracies.

They’re fair weather friends, many of whom backed the Democrats throughout the 1990s. Look at how much money business gave to the 20/20PAC—which is basically a conduit that allows elements within the business community to give money to moderate Democrats while having the outward appearance of being pro-GOP. And this cycle Texans for Lawsuit Reform also gave crucial support for Rep. Chuck Hopson (D-Jacksonville) in his 102-vote victory. In short, big money isn’t principled; it’s self-interested. And it will turn on Republicans whenever the political winds change. Pandering to big money is building a foundation on quicksand.

By contrast, conservative principles have stood the test of time. Low taxes, individual freedom, property rights, pro-life, pro-family, and personal responsibility combined with effective grassroots mobilizing is a solid foundation that will win every time.

Here are a few examples of quicksand:
* Talking about cutting spending, and then passing earmark-laden federal appropriations bills that benefit vendors with lobbyists, not average citizens.
* Making fighting illegal immigration a campaign issue,then having leadership scuttle any meaningful action on the topic because it means a few major donors might actually have to hire U.S. citizens and do things like pay them benefits so they aren’t a burden to taxpayer funded county hospital districts.
* Not doing anything meaningful to put the lid on local government property tax increases and pandering to the trade associations that represent cities and counties.
* Talking about personal responsibility for the poor on welfare all while passing bills that basically exempt big donors like homebuilder Bob Perry from paying fair compensation to homeowners who a jury finds were treated unreasonably by their builder.
* Pursuing higher education policies that prioritize the spending desires of liberal university bureaucrats and the donors that back them, all the while making a college education unaffordable and letting university administrators go on a massive, unjustified spending spree while asking for little or no meaningful accountability in return.
* Letting the same Wall Street crowd that have driven the economy into the ground run our transportation system. Texas transportation policy needs to benefit Texans, not merely a pretext for paying off Wall Street campaign contributors with big-government boondoggles like the Trans-Texas Corridor.

Yes, most Republicans would argue they’ve been treated unfairly by the Capitol press, and that their accomplishments have not been given the treatment they deserve. Yes, the GOP deserves some credit for balancing the 2003 budget without raising taxes and sweeping welfare reform as well as a solid-record on prolife, pro-family issues. But just because one has done some things right, doesn’t mean the press corps will or should let the GOP off the hook when Republicans misbehave.

Plus, a lot of the big accomplishments of the GOP came from 2003. Passing an eminent domain bill and real taxpayer protections would give GOP voters something to crow about again and generate more excitement for the party.

It’s also true that national trends affected the outcome of many of these urban races, and there may be some issues with the mechanics of how and where the GOP spent its money this cycle. That said, voters still respond to winning issues, convincingly stated, and that has been largely absent from both the state and federal GOP the last two cycles. Yes, the mischief at the national level played a role, but some of the problems the Texas GOP brought on itself.

Notice that there are no names of sitting legislators in this essay. That is deliberate. This isn’t personal.This is about enacting policies and running the House in a manner that is good for Texas. In my 10 years covering the Capitol, I have seen many lawmakers whom I used to write off grow and change into effective voices for their constituents.

In a decade of covering campaigns, I’ve heard a lot of GOP primary candidates talk about bringing Christian values to politics. Sure, all have sinned. But one shouldn’t champion bringing Christian values in politics and then condone legislation and actions that would make even the Money Changers in theTemple blush. Integrity and fair-play are as much Christian values as pro-life and pro-family.[bold face added]

In the next few days,Texas lawmakers will choose a leadership team for the 2009 session. The Republicans need to learn the lesson of the last two election cycles and ensure that, whatever leaders are chosen, the House will be run in a manner that makes Texas Republicans proud of the party once again.

Traditional values, individual freedom, politics run from the grassroots up. That’s a rock-solid foundation that really is truly of the party of Ronald Reagan.