Capitol Inside put out an informative “best freshmen” list that illustrates the establishment’s fear of the conservative grassroots.

This list would do two things.

First, it would make a narrative that the conservative push is lost, that business-as-usual has overwhelmed everything.

Second, it would create a wedge between conviction conservatives and one of their most promising young members – the one the lobby seems to fear most – Giovanni Capriglione.

The Capital Inside article began with the author declaring that the freshman class was radically misunderstood. That means that the freshmen, supposedly conviction conservative special forces troops, ended up being reliable special interest factory hands.

The author’s argument is very misleading and selective, and gets wrong the nature of GOP House politics.

Among the 95 House Republicans, nearly everyone has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. This means they are movable, based on which shoulder they are giving audience to in a given political cycle.

The angel is long-term thinking, concerned with our state’s moral goodness, it’s sustainability, and honoring the concerns they were elected to address.

These concerns are, to an issue, derided by the Austin political class as “political only” and “childish”. To the ruling class, manipulation, subterfuge, and satisfying special interests is the business of real adults.

They are concerns like protecting children from dangerous K-12 curriculum, protecting the unborn, honoring God, reducing the tax burden on Texans, securing the border, rule of law, agency reform, providing fiscal safeguards, and others. The political class are as dismissive as they can be about these issues. In Austin, if you make anything more than “for show” noise in advance of any of these things, you will incur the wrath of the Austin jackals.

Like Pavlov’s dog, and whether they realize it or not, the Austin political class are all trained to dutifully serve the special interests. When they speak in tones and on issues that serve special interest power they are considered intelligent and serious, and given access to powerful people. If they speak in tones and on issues that weaken special interest power they are treated as children and told they are selfish and egotistical.

This is nothing more than the “principalities and powers” Paul told us we would remain in perpetual conflict with. Few in the political class have the guts to admit that.

The devil on every House Republican’s shoulder is the strong pull to do anything and everything the coalition of special interests wants done.

This coalition is bi-partisan, each interest paying for their issue to be part of the lobby coalition agenda. Some on the Democratic side supplement money with activist muscle, a trick the GOP is slowly learning. This lobby coalition help each other pass their issues, only opposing each other when their special interests squarely collide.

Everyone in the Austin political class – journalists, activists, staffers, and legislators – feel ruling class love and respect when they shrewdly heave special interest lead. They feel ruling class disappointment and disdain when they do the opposite.

This is life in politics, and it brings us back to the Capitol Inside article. While almost every House Republican wrestles with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, there are a few exceptions.

There is a core of legislators on both ends of the spectrum who are relatively unshakable. For the special interests, there is a group of 15 or so legislators who have become totally deaf in the ear the angel sits on. Their consciences are seared, they’ve self-consciously accepted what they are in the House to do – to get legislation passed to enrich their interest, and no amount of manipulation and scheming is too much to accomplish it.

One the other side, there are a core of House Republicans who have counted the cost, and have disciplined themselves to, with rare exceptions, resist the devil on their shoulder, no matter what he threatens. These are the conservatives that are consistently ignored or berated by the Austin political class.

But, these two groups are the distinct minority.

The majority of the House Republicans are movable. They will go conservative when there is conservative momentum, some requiring more conservative momentum than others, and they will go special interest when special interests own the momentum, some requiring more special interest pressure than others.

What we saw this session was the assassination of conviction conservative momentum during the speaker’s race by Phil King, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to destroy the conservative Speaker challenge. Mike Hailey was the first to report his work for the speaker in the speaker’s race. By the day of the vote King, in concert with the “Austin bubble”, had sewn enough fear and doubt among conservatives to make conservatives do the one thing that would truly cripple their cause: not take the Speaker vote to the floor. Matt Krause and Matt Schaefer heroically stepped out in opposition to the speaker before the vote.

Still, this did give the impression that the conservative push was over – but perception was all it was.

In the course of the session  conservatives one by one rediscovered their voice, and did some really neat things. Phil King’s influence among conservatives was finally what it always should have been: leadership influence, not conservative teammate influence.

The first to step up big after the speaker vote non-vote was Giovanni Capriglione. The savage beating he took in committee on account of his transparency bill reminded everyone what it looks like to strap up for battle in the morning.

Capriglione was attacked for his bill requiring legislators make known the government contracts held by them, their siblings and their spouses. This bill was all goodness and light from the word go, and it was his campaign platform to boot. His very governing mandate came from promising to author this bill.

Still, the committee relentlessly, and against logic, accused him of enacting “political retribution” on Vicki Truitt, the legislator Capriglione beat. She was a Speaker Team true-bluer, and a government contract queen.

Capriglione thus loosed the gag order previously imposed on the angels-on-legislator-shoulders. After that, conservatives began finding their voice.

The large coalition run by Team Special Interest then made their big judgment blunder of the session, at least equaling that of conservatives choosing not to take the speaker vote to the floor. They stubbornly refused to accept what was actually happening: they were losing their cover.

Their response was to cling to the decimation of conservatives that had occurred on the day of the speaker vote, and how they had wrongly assumed they’d have session-long carte blanche.

Because, ultimately what Team Special Interest always needs is for the rest of the legislators to participate in the political drama they are putting on for Texans. As long as everyone plays along, it doesn’t look like the managed storytelling it is, in which special interest legislation passes quietly or in sheep’s clothing, and grassroots legislation always just barely misses; and it always misses with your legislator serving as Davy Crockett at the Alamo.

As soon as truth tellers arrive, the gig is up.

Well, the gig was up, Team Special Interest acted like it wasn’t, and the result was that rank and file House Republicans took more harmful votes, politically and really, of any session ever.

“Outrunning their coverage” doesn’t begin to describe what they did to themselves, and all because leadership bullied them into voting as if the cover was strong after it had become weak.

Contrary to the story Capitol Inside’s best freshmen list and article would tell, the 2013 GOP freshmen class was a mixture of courageous conviction conservatives and calculated conviction conservatives who felt they had to fall in line (and there were a couple of stinkers in the class from the beginning).

Most importantly, when there was conservative momentum – during the primary and for a time in the speaker’s race – you saw what these legislators would do. For the most part, they were good conviction conservatives.

As to Capriglione, the Capitol Inside article seems to be an olive branch to the conviction conservative the lobby seems to fear most. He stepped out first after the speaker’s vote debacle, and he stepped out well.

By putting him in an group of award winners that includes a mixture of the worst and the weakest GOP freshmen, all shined up as heroes of achievement and compromise, he is invited to begin playing both sides more, while his conservative allies are invited to think he has been doing that more than he has.

Capitol Inside’s best freshmen list serves to remind us all that the Austin ruling class fears the conservative movement, fears Capriglione staying true to his convictions, and generally isn’t very good at politics when the session is over.

Tomorrow’s SREC vote on banning recordings at meetings is even worse than it looks.

While obviously terrible policy, and therefore hated already by the grassroots, the desire of the state GOP to black out the Party’s windows is strange given our current set of political circumstances.

First of all, as a rule the GOP establishment prefers not to do bad policy that they can’t hide or dress up.

This is significant because the SREC considering banning recordings is like getting 2 + 2 wrong on the test. You can’t spin it, or hide it, or make it confusing. The only remaining conclusion is that something must be worth the obvious water they are going to take on by even considering this bad policy, much less passing it.

To make it even more high-handed, the GOP delegates voted just last convention to allow recordings, and the GOP’s own rules require open meetings.

This is the equivalent of a man punching his wife in front of his friends and family. It’s a bad deed with no credible excuse, done with a high hand, and done right in front of everyone with a stake in the matter.

If you are the party, what would prompt you make this calculation?

This question is even more important given the fact that the Party is already lobby moderate and basically getting away with it. When Steve Munisteri took over and the lobby wing of the GOP paid off the GOP’s debts, the official state party apparatus rolled over and played dead for the lobby. This has not been a grassroots Texas Republican Party regime.

The salient point here is, they don’t need any extra cover to keep being lobby lapdogs.

It would be wise for Texas conservatives to remember the big picture, though.

The conservative grassroots is the Party’s great vexation. The Party gets votes with a grassroots agenda in order to serve a lobby agenda – this is their business, and business is good.

It is the grassroots that holds the party’s feet to the fire, slowing down their agenda and forcing them to serve ours, when we work really hard.

And, Texas has one of the most active, sophisticated, and unapologetic conservative grassroots in the country. In many ways, Texas is Ground Zero for the GOP’s “grassroots problem”.

At all times the party wants to pull the important grassroots figures into it’s infrastructure in order to neutralize and use them.

So, then, what else is being planned that requires blacking out the party’s windows?

It’s anyone’s guess at this point.

What we know is that the party is considering committing a big, obvious party sin in broad daylight, one that goes against the Party’s own rules and the very recent will of the delegates – all in light of a moderate lobby that is running the Party right now with very few hassles. This kind of water isn’t taken on by accident.

–excellent David Bellow article on the terrible upcoming SREC vote

Liberal writer Abby Rapoport tried to gin up momentum for Democrats’ “turn Texas blue” effort in an article on a blog called ‘The American Prospect’.

Her premise is that because new Republican money is coming in to Texas, Dems must have the GOP running scared.

Where to begin?

For one thing, Democrats tried to “turn Texas blue” for years in advance of 2010 redistricting. It aroused no particular interest from Republican donors and failed miserably.

Now they’re doing it again, and they think that new GOP money in Texas means they have a better chance of winning this time. That’s right, better.

This is a perfect example of the liberal leaps in logic that keep sensible Texans from being very interested in their brand. “We need more jobs, so tax the job makers!” “We need racial harmony, so let’s dredge up past racism every time we give a speech!”

The Texas GOP Chairman said they are using the money to do outreach, which is probably happening elsewhere. Obama has successfully convinced the GOP that signing people up by hand works, so it’s time to get started. That’s sensible.

What this has to do with national Democrats in Texas, again, trying to win Texas over is anyone’s guess. These guys are delusional.

If they make progress in red states it will because of Republicans like Marcio Rubio and the immigration bill they are trying to destroy their own party with right now, not because of another Democrat go to convincing Texans to vote how broken states vote.

–article

Wise County blogger Brian Knox wrote a post, well-intentioned but perhaps off target, following a meeting about CSCOPE hosted by Alice Linahan of Women on the Wall. Knox expressed sadness at the direction of focus and level of rhetoric, and advocated a spirit of dialogue between concerned parents and activists and local educators.

However, though Knox is surely  right that parents and activist handling of CSCOPE is uncomfortable, their outrage is also exactly what the doctor ordered.

It must be said at the start, Knox never justified the promise of his article’s title, “Why the tea party should be CSCOPE’s biggest advocate”. He made some points about good school district people with good intentions, but he never connected them to CSCOPE, and he never addressed CSCOPE’s undisputed malfeasance or why parents are anything but wise and loving for wanting to chase CSCOPE out of the state.

Knox had some well-taken points.

He pointed out that there are many good people in education that really want to fix things, as has always been the case. Knox said that politicians don’t care about fixing education. Though perhaps harsh, it leads to the correct conclusion, namely that successful centralized state management of education is impossible. We have nothing but proof of that fact.

Politicians are constrained by the political process and, as Knox points out, will always need to win political battles first. Unfortunately, the political process usually mangles tools designed to reform entrenched power, an outcome we are safe to assume the politicians wish wasn’t the case, but aren’t willing to start losing every battle on account of.

Knox lamented the idea of putting pressure on school boards to hire a Superintendent that will get rid of CSCOPE. For him it is too confrontational and misses the point of empowering local educators.

Is that correct, though?

There isn’t a single anti-CSCOPE parent or taxpayer that doesn’t want control of education to leave Austin. They want parents to be able to choose where to send their kids, and they want schools to have to compete for students.

The main thing standing in the way of that is the power of the state education bureaucracy.

It simply isn’t realistic to think we can have meaningful local control without breaking the status quo, in which teacher and school board associations constantly compete for state money, and states compete for federal money. In this way, an already inflexible and politicized system gives up essential control.

The progressive standards and dysfunctional teaching system generated by this process is the part that parents and concerned citizens cannot abide.

The real enemy of fixing the system is insufficient motivation for parents and taxpayers to take on the fight. And, as long as the debate temperature stays low, it doesn’t matter how good or bad the ideas being discussed are; the status quo will simply roll over the noise.

CSCOPE has committed sins that are impossible to ignore or forgive – so much so that ignoring this fact is a sure ticket to bringing one’s seriousness, and possibly one’s intentions, into question.

CSCOPE’s arrogance and incompetence were unforgivable, and along the way they generated some attention-grabbing nuggets for marketing education reform to parents and taxpayers. These troops must be recruited, and they perfectly aligned at the deepest levels with altruistic educators to change the fight in favor of reform.

We live with a million things competing for our attention. That isn’t going to change. For something to attract a crowd to a cause it had better have some fireworks around it. In these circumstances being sweet and calm and easy is as good as giving up. We may prefer it, but this approach doesn’t move entrenched power.

Charged-up parents and taxpayers educating about CSCOPE are recruiting troops to education reform that are needed for many battles.

– Wise County blogger post

Speaker Straus gaveled out on June 3 after having set up redistricting committees and with plenty of evidence Governor Perry was going to add pro-life issues to the special session, including calls by activists and elected officials such as Lt. Gov. Dewhurst.

Straus told the House to come back June 17, two weeks later.

Then, in a story on the special session yesterday on kxan.com, Straus tellingly said,  “The Governor keeps adding issues to the call and I would remind people this is only a 30 day session.”

Well golly, how’d time get so short, Mr. Speaker?

Governor Perry added pro-life issues to the special session June 11, which means Straus’s pre-emptive recess cost the House three work days on pro-life issues.

Straus has a history of running the clock out on legislation he doesn’t like, having killed the TSA anti-groping law by putting it off until there wasn’t enough time to get it finished.

If time is such a precious commodity, why did Straus lop off half of the special session time with clear indications other issues were likely to be added?

Straus has a colorful history with the issue of abortion. His wife was a board member for Planned Parenthood years ago, and Straus received campaign money early in his legislative career from a Planned Parenthood PAC. He was once thanked by Planned Parenthood for his “tireless efforts” for their cause.

In an interview with Evan Smith after he was first elected Speaker in 2009, he owned the pro-choice policy, saying he would not seek to change abortion laws.

Then, in 2010, Straus attracted a conservative speaker challenge in pro-life champion Ken Paxton and for the first time ever claimed to be pro-life.

In 2010 voters created such a conservative electoral tsunami that no speaker could have thwarted pro-life legislation.

As a result, some pro-life bills passed. Straus turned lemons into lemonade, seeking to make pro-life groups feel indebted to him for legislation he was powerless to stop in the first place. No doubt he would pretend the sonogram bill was his gracious gift to pro-life groups for as long as they would allow him to.

It was rumored before the 83^rd Legislature that Straus told legislators not to bother with pro-life legislation because he would not allow it to get to the floor. He has also made recent comments to the effect that he believes abortion is not a “serious issue”, but a political wedge issue.

One wonders what someone’s definition of “serious” must be to exclude murder of the most innocent people in Texas and include constant Bad News Bears schemes to get slot machines into Texas.

This is all happening at a time many establishment Republican voices want to push the party left on all issues. In fact, a recent national GOP survey asked Republican voters if they think the GOP should remain the pro-life party. In case anyone was wondering, there was no similar question about whether the GOP should remain the party of big business.

Pro-life Texans would be wise to look on the treatment of pro-life issues during this special session with great interest, now that Straus has tried to blame Governor Perry for over-stuffing the special session even though Straus himself shrunk it by half.

Let Texans Decide, gambling expansion propagandists, have just this week popped back up like a meth addict who just heard the candyman’s car drive up. They are  begging passersby to expand gambling in order to pay for the transportation spending now being considered.

And this despite the fact that gambling costs states significantly more in increased law enforcement, social services, and decreased taxable revenue due to decreased productivity than it brings in in gambling revenue.

The $3 billion of gambling money spent across the Texas border that Let Texans Decide constantly talks about would yield almost nothing in state revenues, because over 90% of this money would go to a nontaxable prize pool.

The remaining 7% or 8% that is actually taxable would yield trivial levels of revenue and would cause many expensive problems for Texas.

Expanded gambling would benefit the Texas gambling oligopoly and would hurt everyone else.

–Let Texans Decide post

Evan Smith did an interview with the Texas Monthly journalists who chose the Best/Worst lists for Texas legislators, the one Harvey Hilderbran described on Twitter as “a parlor game rigged against conservatives who opposed the budget”.

Smith kicked off the discussion by asking if the list was about playing well in the Austin system (“process”) or voting on and/or passing “good” or “bad” bills (“outcomes”).

This is a trickier question than it first appears to be.

On the one hand, the rankings can’t really be  about “good” or “bad” voting because that would mean they have a political bias, which they still pretend not to have.

On the other hand, the list gets its juice by being an effective prop to the Austin establishment.

This drama is a good illustration of how politicized journalists must double-talk like politicians.

After Smith asked them if the list was about playing nicely in the Austin system or passing “good” or “bad” bills, Paul Burka’s  first statement was that it was both. This was his admission that the list is political. It was a bias admission of sorts that served to undercut potential claims of bias from disgruntled legislators. It’s a ‘save your criticism’ play.

Then in his next sentence he said that they have to be “agnostic” about whether a bill is good or bad.

If that made no sense to you, you’re tracking perfectly.

Smith asked Burka if the list is about passing good or bad bills, Burka said yes, then immediately said the list is not about passing good or bad bills, ostensibly because that would make it biased.

It was nonsense, but politician-style nonsense. It leaves them able to defend themselves in all directions.

A nice feature of the Best/Worst list is that their version of “process” completely covers ideology too.

Everyone who votes straight establishment ideology is made into a peacemaker by the Austin press corps and anyone who opposes it is called an obstructionist and blanketed in “controversy” by the same press corps. Process and outcome become exactly aligned.

These aren’t your father’s liberal journalists.

Like the golden age of the American cowboy, the golden age of liberal journalism is over. As the Texas Monthly Best/Worst list illustrates, we are well into the age of liberal journalists as props to power.

Platform shrinkers are the mortal enemies of responsible conservative outcomes.

Moderates love to push for platform shrinking – whether issues are literally taken out of the platform or we all agree to ignore them in practice – because platform shrinking = accountability shrinking.

Platform shrinking is a way for closet moderates to push a moderate agenda in conservative clothes.

They say, “Boy I’m conservative like you, and to pass the really important stuff we need to focus like a laser on it. We need to get rid of most of the GOP platform, don’t you agree?”

Conservatives do not.

Platform shrinkers make their case by trying to convince conservatives, a)  that there is simply no time to pass bills on most platform issues, and, b)  that focusing on too many things weakens the most important ones.

The opposite is true on both counts.

First let’s consider the time issue. The legislature files and/or votes on hundreds of bills every time they meet.

Here a few of the bills they had time and energy for:

• HB 1819 – Relating to liability for injuring a trespassing sheep or goat
• HB 174 – Relating to creating American Indian Heritage Day
• HB 295 – Relating to the creation of a commission to study drowsy driving

There is no time shortage as long as there is time for legislation like this.

What about the platform shrinker’s  “dilution of energy and purpose” argument? Does going after too much good legislation make it all weak?

Exactly the opposite.

Suggesting otherwise is like saying a family should put a strict limitation on good deeds to one another and to neighbors, because, if they go around doing too much good, it’ll get diluted.

Good deeds are not a zero sum game. Good begets good. All conservative issues reinforce each other.

Notice that when moral/cultural issues are passing, fiscal discipline is always at its highest ebb. Case in point: the 82^nd Legislature.

Why? Because fiscal restraint is moral restraint. Moral thinking puts people in the proper head space to make good, long term fiscal decisions.

Conversely, selfish thinking makes it easy to spend taxpayer money on fattening government fiefdoms.

This is why the best pro-life session  ever in Texas went with one of the best fiscally disciplined sessions ever.

Rice University’s Mark Jones wrote an article about how the 83^rd legislature was a “purple session in a red state”. With a bonanza of funds, the Rainy Day Fund was raided even more heavily than in the 82^nd Legislature, when funds were scarce, giving big spenders much better leverage to go after the RDF.

In fact, the lobby actively tries to create a sinful, self-serving environment in capitol towns because they know this is the most fertile atmosphere for getting crony legislation passed.

This is also why some of the best, most praiseworthy, and most subversive things conservative legislators can do in capitol towns is bible studies, charity activities, and making their families visible often to remind other legislators of their own familial vows.

In truth, there is a battle for atmosphere in capitol towns that the lobby knows about and fights, and that conservatives need to understand and engage with more.

We see moderate platform shrinking efforts at the state and national levels.

Speaker Straus didn’t allow abortion bills to make it to the floor, though Governor Perry has brought them into the special session. And abortion is the moral/cultural issue that gets the most oxygen of all of them.

Remember when Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels entered the presidential primary race with a big establishment push and quickly called a truce on the social issues to really focus hard on the fiscal issues?

This comment destroyed his candidacy, but the establishment was still able to nominate someone who was just as squishy as Daniels, and maybe even more squishy. This guaranteed us the Establishment Shellshock of 2012, after conservatives had provided the Tea Party Tsunami of 2010.

During the Presidential primary John Boehner was also on TV advocating for getting the “long and confusing” platform onto one piece of paper. He claims nobody has read it, so it needs to get shorter.

This is another scam. The platform is a reference document, not leisure reading. Boehner’s comments make about as much sense as saying the dictionary should be shortened so to be readable in one nice day at the beach.

The truth is, moderates don’t believe in most of the platform, they don’t want to anger the Democrats they need to help them pass bills conviction conservatives won’t vote for, and they need Republican voters to keep voting them into office. For these reasons they’d vastly prefer a tiny, business lobby-only GOP platform.

But the platform is the voter’s leverage point. Shrinking it is about shrinking voter power and nothing else. The platform is the default positions for anyone calling themselves a Republican. Silence on a platform issue is taken by voters as agreement, a reality massively abused by moderates. They fear being asked good questions during primaries on many of platform issues.

In reality, shrinking the platform means allowing crony moderates all the room they need to keep voters from knowing who they are, and it would usher in even more reckless spending, corruption, and immorality than we already do.

Beware of platform shrinkers.

*Thanks to Cahnman over at Cahnman’s Musing for kind words about this piece and for correcting me about who made the infamous “truce on social issues” comment.

Obama doesn’t have the juice left for any big legislative wins. The GOP establishment is subsidizing Obama’s presidential relevance right now by owning this “Gang of 8” amnesty push that, if successful, will fall gently into Obama’s lap as perhaps the most important achievement of his presidency, since it would cripple the GOP’s chances to ever win national elections again.

In 1986 the Simpson(R)-Mazzoli(D) immigration reform bill was signed into law by Ronald Reagan. Afterwards,  the relative popularity of the two parties among Hispanics was unchanged. This was amnesty politically credited to the biggest Republican icon since Lincoln, and it still didn’t do what Lindsey Graham and the GOP establishment is suggesting this bill would do for the GOP.

Lindsay Graham put out an opinion piece recently about how the GOP is in a demographic death spiral and this immigration reform bill – authored by four Republicans and four Democrats – will somehow fix that.

What is his reasoning here? Even if it were authored only by the GOP, and signed into law by a Republican president,  it still wouldn’t win over the people it legalized. Which party pushes new entitlements the hardest will always have much more to do with who a new, legalized Americans will vote for, and the GOP will always be in second place on that front. The idea that this bill will win the GOP new voters out of legalized ex-illegals is a stupid argument from a GOP establishment shill fronting for the big business lobby, and with no regard for the rule of law or the GOP’s ability to win a national election.

The GOP simply cannot appeal to people on the same terms as Democrats. However, the GOP can crush the Democrats on other terms, terms that fueled the Tea Party Tsunami of 2010, terms the GOP establishment is perpetually opposed to.

The reality is, the “Gang of 8 bill” isn’t authored only by Abraham Lincoln and signed into law by Ronald Reagan. It is written half by Democrats, would be signed in by a Democrat, whose White House is said to be running the bill. If the Gang of 8 bill passes it will be an Obama victory, and  the biggest political gift of all time from one party to the other.

There is a reason Obama and the Democrats want amnesty so bad, and it is the same reason they do everything they do – power. They want to wipe out the GOP. The GOP establishment, with cooperation from Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, is helping Democrats.

Ted Cruz has come out on fire against this bill, but even his push suggests that if border security were achieved it would be okay to create 11 million new Democrats out of people who broke the law to be here. However, Sen. Cruz may believe that his hard line on border security first is a poison pill for the bill.

In fact, liberals have confirmed their considerable fear of Cruz on this issue by, beginning to make an illogical argument against him on the basis of his father’s immigration, one that plays to one of Cruz’s strengths and is likely to give him a great opportunity to win new followers defending himself.

But, as any free market advocate should know, the single most important factor in behavior is incentives, not the mechanics of management, important as they may be as mitigating factors. Crack border security is no match for human ingenuity when people have been shown which activities will benefit them.

President Reagan legalized 3 million illegal immigrants, and now we have 11 million. Senator Cruz is exactly right to suggest we will have 20 or 30 million more in 25 years if we grant amnesty. Even if border security can mitigate that, it is a fool’s errand to pursue border measures as if they can end illegal immigration when we have made our generous welfare state available to anyone in the world who can sneak in to the country.

Pro-Straus forces have been out lying, trying to blame the death of the pro-life omnibus bill on somebody else. Straus killed it, but Perry can make it all but certain to pass by calling a pro-life only special session.

Though not clean, among the “Big 3”, Lt. Gov. Dewhurst comes out the best on this, so far. Dewhurst applied pressure before the end of the regular session to add pro-life to the special session call.

Then, when the Senate passed SB 5 he called out Speaker Straus and the House, telling them if he didn’t get the bill back by Sunday afternoon there wouldn’t be enough time to pass it. This put the pressure on Straus, who would’ve much rather passed it too late to matter and played dumb publicly so he could blame it on the Senate privately, when necessary. Then, the Straus decided the House would not work on Saturday, and the House didn’t get the bill out until Monday.

Dewhurst could have ended the filibuster or suspended the 24 hour layout rule and didn’t. However, he telegraphed that these tougher procedural measures were a bridge too far for him when he told the world that Straus had to get the bill done on Sunday for it to be able to get through the Senate again.

Would a Democrat have played hardball and ended the filibuster or suspended the 24 hour layout rule? Of course. Republicans don’t fight like Democrats and Dewhurst was no exception here, much to the dismay of conservatives.

Pro-Straus forces have made hay about the fact that Dewhurst went to Europe for 10 days, but this is silly. Dewhurst left the Senate fully functional, and the man has a cell phone. The Senate was ready for action, even though there was nothing to do besides redistricting at the time and Straus had killed half of the session by calling a two week recess.

Pro-Straus forces are also making hay about the senate taking the fetal pain part out of the omnibus bill. Why, pro-life hawk Straus added what pro-life dove Dewhurst left out, right?

Wrong. What actually happened is Speaker Straus found a way to kill babies with the fetal pain bill. Here’s how.

The Senate took out the fetal pain portion of the bill because they were actually trying to pass it. When that happens so does compromise. Even without fetal pain pro-life groups still loved the omnibus bill.

What Straus did, through his goons, was add fetal pain via a committee substitute in order to change the bill so the Senate had to re-vote on it. Straus made sure to leave too little time for another vote to get done.

He will now pretend to be more pro-life than Dewhurst.

Straus could’ve gotten SB5 on the calendar for Saturday and sent it back to the Senate the same day. That would have made a filibuster virtually impossible. Instead, Saturday was wasted and the bill didn’t make it out of the House until Monday, making Wendy Davis’ job doable.

Thus, Straus killed babies with fetal pain legislation. If you ever needed a clue about whether the crony moderate Rs were on the side of good or bad, you might apply your sniffer to this one.

Gov. Perry should be commended for adding pro-life to the call, though he could have made it much harder on Straus by adding it to the call early on.

Since pro-life wasn’t added to the call until a few days before the House returned, Straus can pretend his unprecedented two week House vacation during a four week special session didn’t make the difference (you can hear it – “Our recess wasn’t determinative. Pro-life wasn’t added until right before we came back anyway”).

And, Perry can say that he only waited so long because Straus had ensured they wouldn’t be back until then, so what did it matter that he did other things first?

Smells like politicians, doesn’t it? Everyone gets to blame someone else.

Still, Perry ultimately added it with enough time for it to pass and should get credit for that. He brought a lot of attention to these issues and gave voice to a drum beat for the features of this omnibus bill that will not die.

Straus is the bad guy. Whoever may or may not have put a gun or bullets on the table, Straus pulled the trigger. He gaveled out for 2 weeks after he set up the redistricting committees in order to kill the clock in case pro-life was added. Then, he didn’t pass anything until there wasn’t enough time left to finish, which is his standard move when killing bills he pretends to support but really opposes.

Still, Gov. Perry is sitting on the ultimate ace in the hole. He can call them back for another special session only for the pro-life omnibus bill.

The House could file the exact bill they just passed, down to the punctuation marks. The only difference would be the “HB” and the new number. Since the same bill just passed, we know that anyone who previously voted for the bill who suddenly gets cold feet and need to waste some time filib…, err, talking it over, they are with Straus as a crypto-pro-choicer, and deserve as much scorn as can be mustered.

Then, the same thing happens in the Senate, since they just passed it, too.

This would be quick, easy, would save lives, is the right thing to do, and it would prove everyone actually means it when they say they want to save lives.

Harvey Kronberg gave political analysis of the effect Ted Cruz is having on national politics, appropriating ruling class mythology from the Democratic side.

His large-sized challenge was to create doubt in Texas about a very popular Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Kronberg’s answer was a little convoluted, but given the circumstances, it was a pretty creative attempt to slow conservatives down.

Kronberg is addressing a need. The Democrats need to create some cultural momentum in Texas, since they are attempting to “turn Texas blue”. The problem is, the Democrat brand is 100% garbage in our state.

Kronberg employed a much more practical strategy – try to demotivate the Republican base, since the Democrats are hoping they can bring Chicago to Texas and voter-fraud their way to victory here. They want a replay of the 2012 national election – help the moderates win control in the GOP to depress GOP turnout, then sign up enough Democrats voters in key places, legally and illegally, to win seats.

Kronberg’s message was basically that Ted Cruz driving the Republican message nationally could backfire. Sure, it may not backfire in Texas, but Texans should temper their love for Cruz, because it could be a disaster for Republicans in purple and blue states.

And, oh yeah, says Kronberg, all of this pro-lifery is motivating pro-choice donors to give money to the turn Texas blue effort, so you better quit that too.

Thanks for the advice.

Actually, the big strokes of the entire American political struggle is bound up in this false narrative.

In truth, when conviction conservatives get momentum in our politics, they clear the board like Attila the Hun. We all know this – we were all there when it happened.

The problem is, it doesn’t happen very often. When it does, the establishment GOP is usually inclined to let it happen because the Democrats are getting a little too powerful.

See, if the Democrats get too powerful, the establishment GOP knows their donors will end up on the menu, so every now and then, they need the conservative special forces to come in a beat back the Ds.

The problem for the establishment Republicans is that the conservatives are too good – Reagan, Contract with America, Tea Party Tsunami. The fact is, when the conviction side of the party get the reins, the GOP wins huge.

And notice when all of these elections happened – in Carter’s re-election year, in Clinton’s first mid-term election, in Obama’s first mid-term election. All of these happened under Democrat control, with the exception of Reagan’s re-election, which the establishment was powerless to stop because Reagan had the ultimate bully pulpit.

In other words, the moderates need some conservative muscle, conservatives predictably dominate the election, making difficult the parasitic establishment GOP’s job of taking power back.

From an establishment GOP perspective, times like these – like after the Tea Party Tsunami of 2010 – are horrible. Suddenly the GOP starts dealing with the nation’s problems in earnest instead of securing more money and privilege for patrons, then giving the leftovers of their energy and political power to fixing real problems. For them it’s a big problem that must be remedied.

This “conservative problem” was remedied last time during the Presidential nomination process with lots and lots and lots of money and media assistance.

Moderate GOP candidates were allowed to say pretty conservative things to give Republican voters the impression that the GOP had learned its lesson. The message was that everyone is Tea Party now. The only question left is if the GOP voters were going to put the professionals in charge or the conviction amateurs. This was good framing by the GOP establishment.

It was a complete lie, of course. With the help of huge amounts of money and a FOX News rolling over, Romney used an air of inevitability to overcome the fact that nobody liked him. He moderated as soon as he won the nomination, showing the true colors that were never far from the surface, depressing the entire GOP with a reminder who he was.

It was a buyer’s remorse general election for Republicans.

The establishment thus wrestled back party control, and the Democrats turned what should have been the second installment of Tea Party 2010 into a modest win.

Then, Karl Rove and Co. began saying to everyone that the reason the GOP lost wasn’t that it ran a squishy moderate, but that the cycle was too conservative.

In truth, with Romney at the helm in the general election, 2012 wasn’t even in the same conservative galaxy as 2010 when the Democrat heads were put on spits nationwide. Rove and Co. were fighting for their lives. Either spin this into conservatives’ fault or go away.

With media cooperation, the establishment GOP has somewhat turned the tide in favor of this anti-conservative mythology – though it is exceedingly thin and fragile. Nobody trusts it.

Enter Ted Cruz reminding people at the gut level that the GOP special forces are winners, reminding people of the political potency of believing in something. This brings us back to Kronberg and “turn Texas Blue”.

With Ted Cruz keeping the impressive power of conservative conviction visible, “Turn Texas Blue” wants to damage him. However, trying to fight conservative power in Texas with a liberal message is a fool’s errand, and Kronberg knows it.

Instead, Kronberg channels Karl Rove and Co., knowing they are in conservatives’ heads a little bit from years of lies and manipulation.

Kronberg says that this dangerous conservative stuff  – remember how it backfired in 2012(?) – could help Texas a little but at the cost of – THE WHOLE COUNTRY TURNING BLUER !!!!

This message doesn’t particularly resonate, and is not supposed to be swallowed whole, just like the establishment lie of the last presidential primary season, that every Republican was now a Tea Party Republican, was not meant to be swallowed whole. Both are meant to create enough doubt to take the edge off of conviction conservative intentions.

Kronberg also says a few things in his article that are just wrong. One is that it is unknown how a conviction conservative line will play in purple states. Wrong, Harvey. 2010. The big dog dominates every time it is let out of the cage.

Kronberg talks about the “fundamental takeaway of 2012” being that Hispanics and women decided battle ground states. This isn’t true either, at least not without being qualified nearly out of existence.

It is only true when the establishment GOP takes control of the political cycle because then Americans know everyone is looking for goodies and nobody is thinking about the long term.

At that point, yes, identity politics start to matter. At that point you’ve managed to get the electorate in a vain, selfish, fakey mood, and a vote can be successfully turned into a status symbol.

But make no mistake. When conviction conservatives own the political cycle all of that stuff is blown away like so much chaff.

This was a hard reality Kronberg is trying to avoid, but it won’t ultimately matter in Texas.

The Democrats’ one hope is voter fraud, but that will also be harder with Greg Abbott as Sherriff. This ain’t Chicago.

Watch Joe Straus during the 2^nd special session if you want to know what it will feel like to have Dan Branch as an Attorney General.

Is Branch trustworthy? Watch Straus. Does Branch plan to serve the political class or the interests of Texas over the long haul? Watch Straus.

This is because Branch is Straus’s closest and most reliable partner in legislative crime – they are practically political twins – and Dan Branch wants to be your next Attorney General.

This is especially relevant since Branch may be facing Ken Paxton, should Paxton choose to join the AG race, as he is reportedly considering doing.

Paxton’s political track record is integrity. It is unusual for Texans to have such a choice for statewide office.

For years Branch has made a show of being Straus’s bulldog, Straus’s man.

Texans now have front row seats to watch them work at a time when Texans need to decide if they want to further entangle themselves with this clique.

Unborn Texans over 20 weeks old have an enemy in delay tactics. Pro-life Texans should be on the look out for them in the upcoming special session.

An SB5 replica bill should need virtually nothing besides basic legislative procedure. Watch out for things like putting other issues first, taking time off, putting up a different pro-life bill so they can argue about it, and so on.

This is the season that politicians try to get grassroots support for their next primary. They will ask people what they can do to gain their support.

Though understandable, it not a particularly fair question to ask grassroots leaders. There is no promise a politician can make that will mean more to the grassroots than a politician’s record, and grassroots leaders aren’t in it for perks.

The days of getting credit for giving a good effort are rapidly coming to a close. The one thing politicians can do for themselves is get results.

Besides, if GOP leaders can’t get results with 95 Republicans in the House, 19 in the Senate, Republicans in every major statewide office, and virtually all of them claiming to be conservative on every issue, they shouldn’t expect primary season promises to get them very much.

The professional left is coming into the Texas to provide professional outrage at the Capitol during the special session. They are here to bully Texas.

Good luck. It didn’t work in Wisconsin, and Texans aren’t easily bullied. Also, the unemployable rejects who protest for money should be pitied, not feared.

The left is petrified that Texas is going to pass strong pro-life legislation.

This Occupy-style astroturf is not Texas, and this heat can’t be brought to bear in Texas elections. It is smoke and mirrors.

Some of the liberals in Austin are pretending the left’s protests are organic. Craigslist ad after Craigslist ad for paid protesters suggests otherwise.

One of the primary articles that made the “organic” suggestion was written is the Texas Tribune after the mob descended on the Senate at the end of the first special session.

The Texas Tribune is a site run by a transplanted New Yorker named Evan Smith, and the article was written by another transplanted New Yorker named Aman Batheja.

The Texas Tribune’s largest published funder, the Knight Foundation, is headquartered in Miami, Florida. The Tribune also once received a donation from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

In addition, the “#standwithwendy” twitter support for Wendy “Babycrusher” Davis was reportedly almost 3/4ths from outside the state.

The truth is, it was pro-life Democrat Senator Eddie Lucio who made some of the most heartfelt and inspiring remarks about the value of life during Babycrusher Davis’ filibuster. This is Texas.

Davis’ politics are more northeastern liberal than a Texas Democrat. Many Texas Democrats are pro-life, including prominent ones like Sen. Lucio and Sen. Zaffarini.

Who knows, maybe during their stay the protesters will eat some barbeque, drink a Shiner, and start to think straight.

“Hail Satan!” chants were launched by pro-abortion activists at the capitol at peaceful pro-life protesters who were singing “Amazing Grace!”

“Amazing Grace” was written by John Newton, who converted to Christianity after seeing the horrors of the slave trade, and later joined forces with William Wilberforce, the most seminal and important abolitionist of the modern era.

Ending abortion has been called by many the abolition movement of our time.

Pro-abortion protesters have been villains this week at the Texas capitol, channeling such evil to get their message across that Texas Democrats with consciences are likely to take an inventory of whom they have signed up with.

There was an eight year old girl holding a sign that said, “If I want the government is my womb, I would f*** a Senator!”

The left has taken its mask off in Texas, and the view has been very ugly.

It highlights how the left dresses its horrible causes up in church clothes.

For example, look at the original ads on Craigslist to pay people to protest at the capitol. They took down the ads, but the screenshot is at the bottom of this page.

They were hiring protesters for the pro-abortion protest at the capitol.

Then the ads were pulled, and the same group put up ads to hire people to recruit liberal activists. The new ads are linked at the bottom of this page.

They talk about signing people up in order to get food and clean water to the poor people of the world. But this activist recruitment ad showed up after the pro-choice ad from the same group was pulled.

Why the sanitized messaging?

Was the turnout dismal, so the left is recruiting pro-abortion activists for the future with “feed the world” rhetoric?

Has this protest already become such an embarrassment that they need to use a bait-and-switch to get people to respond?

In any case, the left has long marketed itself to Christians of all varieties as on the side of angels.

This week’s paid pro-abortion protests at the capitol – protests designed to keep abortion in which the baby feels pain legal – are likely help genuine Christians, and moral people generally, to see what there support goes to when they throw in with the left.

This is especially pertinent because these protesters are trying to “Turn Texas Blue” in the next election.

Obama’s national Democrats have come to Texas to try and infect the Lone Star State with the same politics they have infected Washington DC with.

After seeing this protest, how many Texans, currently left-leaning, will do their part to turn Texas redder?

Unborn children over 20 weeks old would benefit from that.

–”Hail Satan!” chants

–New CL ad from the same group that ran the now-gone paid pro-abortion protester ads

With hypocrisy so pungent only a politician would try it, Jim Pitts wrote an article decrying transparency abuse, aiming his stinky cannon at an emerging champion of good government, UT Regent Wallace Hall Jr. The Austin American-Statesman published this gem.

First things first – in principle, the quest for transparency can most definitely be abused.

A great example is the transparency abuse Pitts’ legislative clique attempted on non-connected Texans in SB 346 in the 83^rd Legislative session. The bill would have forced small donors to non-profit organizations to have their names published so establishment thugs would know whom to pressure.

Governor Perry vetoed the bill after it passed both chambers.

It was legislation the Democrats in Washington DC have been salivating over for some time but haven’t been able to get. The reason they like it so much is that they thrive on intimidation – legal, cultural – you name it. After all, they want people to vote against common sense on every single issue and you need intimidation for that.

There was only ever one purpose for this legislation – to discourage general interest (non-special interest) Texans from funding Texas politics.

The Texas ruling class wants to intimidate people who give money to groups who hold government accountable. The ruling class sees robbing taxpayers as their right. From their perspective, they won the privilege to legally rob fair and square when they won their elections. As a result, they resent sunlight.

Enter UT Regent Wallace Hall Jr.

His job description is to oversee the people who run the University of Texas, namely the President.

In recent years those who run UT have allowed tuition to skyrocket – outpacing price inflation in virtually every sector of American society – and without even pretending to offer a different product from the one they offered when it was much cheaper. Their best line of defense is the old “the other kids are doing it” excuse.

This excuse doesn’t work in Texas. If Texans wanted to be useless lemmings they’d move somewhere else. And Texans aren’t terribly interested in the government-executed cultural suicide pact that so much of Western civilization is currently engaged in. Texans aren’t cultural “cutters”, as so many Westerners currently are.

Texas grows many things, and one of them is solutions to all of this silliness.

Still, UT is marching right along with the trend of universities fleecing taxpayers and tuition payers, relying on the fact that the US News and World Report won’t like them anymore if they don’t.

Really, this fleecing should surprise no one, since UT is pretty much a black box. What are they spending money on? Who knows? Quit asking.

See, they are academics – our modern priestly class – harboring no political proclivities or selfishness, and since they nobly lead all of us forward into the great beyond, even the concept of oversight is hateful.

Yeah, Texans aren’t buying.

Pitts starts the article by informing us that he does, after all, like some kinds of transparency, though not all.

He doesn’t explain that it is transparency on people who would check government power that he likes and transparency on government power that he dislikes.

The ruling class in Texas is making much of “mob rule” right now, after an angry mob allegedly made passage of the abortion bill impossible in the first special session. They are keen to emphasize the “republic” (connoting representation) part of our democratic republic, and de-emphasize the “democratic” part. This is a narrative they would like eventually to turn on conservative activists.

The problem with their reasoning is that the framers of our system intended the “democratic” part of our “democratic republican” system to keep officials from robbing and tyrannizing us, as they intended the “republic” to keep mobs from robbing and tyrannizing us.

In the case of the liberal activists who tried to shout down the abortion bill – sure enough – they were a mob protecting sexual license at the cost of murderous tyranny on the most innocent Texans – the unborn.

In the case of our ever-worsening government/academia education racket, it is regents like Wallace Hall Jr that are trying to put a stop to rampant government abuse.

In this drama, Jim Pitts is a servant of the entity that is slowly drowning our culture, and Hall is part of the solution, if there is to be one.

The rest of the ruling class – establishment media, legislators, and activists, and others – will try to swirl up a big enough windstorm to make average Texans go against their gut instincts by pretending academia isn’t broken, but the good thing about Texans is they go against the crowd when we need to.

In this case, Texans will be going against a perception, generated by the ruling class, that most are fully confident that higher education is operating in good faith and horrified by attempts to end their long standing abuse of average citizens.

Virtually everybody thinks Higher Ed is out of control and price inflation is only the start of it.

–Pitts article

In the latest instance of the ruling class assault on rule of law, Rep. Byron Cook’s office seems to have decided they no longer need to even make a show of following state open records law.

AgendaWise sent an open records request for Cook’s calendar on March 11^th which went unanswered.

AgendaWise then sent a certified letter May 15^th. This letter was returned July 3^rd. The envelope came back with someone having written on it “AgendaWise”, “Refused”, “Return”, and “RTS”.

AgendaWise will be sending another request to Cook’s office.

Cook’s office admitted to AgendaWise two years ago that they didn’t keep a calendar, which is against the law.

Cook is an establishment Republican and part of a crew who endanger the future of our state by giving their best to the lobby and treating as trivial and ‘political-only’ important long term issues such as state debt and spending, school curriculum, rule of law, bureaucracy reform.

Many such officials are great at engineering excuses for themselves and glad-handing their district into liking them.

This is why, for example, the US Congress’ approval rating is at 10%, yet virtually every district thinks their elected official is one of the few good guys.

Only engagement can educate voters. It is a good idea for people unhappy with the product delivered by our political establishment to pay attention to who the establishment attacks and hates.

The establishment’s targets are the people actually threatening to reform the system. They are the people whose opinions of legislators really count.

–Two articles on Cook’s previous calendar drama 1, 2

Gambling expansion has gotten more bad news.

The crux of the crony conservative argument in favor of gambling expansion is that casinos generate more tax revenue. This talking point, naively accepted from the gambling lobby in states all over the country, has been on life support in Texas for a couple of years.

It may now be operating under a death sentence after casinos in Delaware had to receive state bailouts this year in order to survive.

In fact, casinos are struggling mightily all over the country.

This adds more fuel to the fire that gambling costs states much more than the paltry revenues they bring in. Laws expanding gambling are passed for the benefit of gambling oligopolies who contribute money to political campaigns at the expense of everyone else.

–Washington Post article about Delaware gambling bailouts

The CSCOPE drama is still in full swing, with CSCOPE declaring their discredited curriculum ‘public domain,’ purportedly giving school districts the ability to continue using it.

According to a KLBJ story, this decision came from the Texas Education Agency’s General Counsel. In the staff directory on TEA’s website, David A. Anderson is listed as General Counsel.

This comes after concerned parents were months ago told the drama had concluded after passage of a bill that was designed to force school districts to quit using the discredited CSCOPE curriculum.

Activists and concerned parents in some areas are planning to demand their school district not use this curriculum, encouraging school boards to remove Superintendents who allow it to happen.

–KLBJ story

–TEA staff directory

Sarah Davis has chosen to become one of the the greatest enemies of the unborn in the state of Texas.

The reason is simple. As a Republican she is inside the only force in our government pledged to providing our unborn brothers and sisters equal life protection under the law, and she is actively campaigning for the party to turn their back on them.

Davis wrote a pro-abortion Op-Ed in the Houston Chronicle that opened with a line about the dignity of each person.

For her, it seems the sentiment doesn’t extend to the unborn. The pro-abortion movement dehumanizes unborn children by only referring to them as “fetuses”.

That is, unless they are obsessively charting the progress of the royal fetus in England.

They reserve the right to acknowledge, and even celebrate, the humanity of the unborn when it is fun for them. When it isn’t fun, or when it threatens future fun, they are disposable ‘fetuses’.

Davis’ shot across the bow comes just as the major strides forward are being made in the pro-life movement, the civil rights movement of our age.

Hers is impeccable establishment Republican timing – she would throw out the one GOP issue that has been gaining ground during the past five years, as liberalism has been on the advance on virtually every other issue.

Davis’s article, true to the pro-abortion movement it serves, is perfectly nonsensical.

She is protecting freedom by crusading for legal murder, she is protecting medicine by protecting one of the most dangerous and harmful procedures for women in existence, both physically and psychologically, and she declares that the issue of legal abortion will never be decided through lawmaking, when it very much should be.

Also, holding a position, advancing one, and aggressively advancing one are three different things. This qualifies in the last category. It was unacceptable when she was in the first category.

Davis has put up a trial balloon for Republicans in Texas. She would carve out room for more and more pro-abortion Republicans to be elected to ensure the long-term viability of the 60’s “free love” movement, a culture that has so far cost us over 56 million American lives, conservatively estimated.

For those keeping track, the body count for every American military conflict ever fought is less than 1.3 million.

Davis she has chosen to launch a political offensive, and she couldn’t have picked a more violent or unjust cause.

–Davis’ Houston Chronicle attack on the unborn