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