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.