Paul Burka has begun talking about John Smithee as a speaker candidate. Smithee is likely to be the establishment’s repository for conservative speaker race energy next session.
Smithee scored an “F” on Empower Texans’ Fiscal Responsibility Index, and got a “D” on YCT’s ratings scorecard. He was once better than this, but has let himself be lured to where so many before him have gone, never to return – the King’s Court.
Burka is himself a court journalist, one particularly bitter against the conservative insurgency. Using his blog as a runway for a potential speaker candidate to take a nice, long turn on is a good reminder of the space Smithee occupies in Texas politics.
The more humorous part is that Burka tried, like a young man yawning to sneak his arm around a girl, to be a conservative kingmaker, or, at least, a credible judge of conservative sincerity. Burka brandished Smithee’s thin tea party credentials and quite generously tagged him as “viable”. He also damage-controlled the fact that Smithee was a Straus chair by presenting him as the Chair who didn’t vote for the House budget.
Right now is an important time in our politics. From the beginning, committed Tea Party members and fellow travelers have been provided no end of bad excuses for giving up and going along. Some are battle weary. Some thought genuineness would take them further faster than it has, and now their vanity is trying to muscle their integrity out of the decision-making process. For the establishment, this is a good time for people who can pass as conservatives to try to quietly take the reins of the conservative ship.
The big problem with that is that if conservatives are going to change anything, they need to be willing to do Austin-on-Austin violence when the situation calls for it, which is precisely what prevents you from enjoying the fruits of the Texas ruling class. Sure, they’ll let you make a show of being a good conservative, or a good liberal for that matter, especially if that is important to your re-election. That is, as long as you don’t fight when the ruling class gives the ‘sit’ command – which happens to be precisely the moments when the landscape is in danger of changing.
John Smithee may be a nice guy, and he may have a conservative bent on many issues, but a conservative fighter he is not. The truth is, for legislators and politicos there is Team Texan and Team Ruling Class. Both teams require legislators to govern. Both teams would, all things being equal, like to do good for average Texans and get along with government people in Austin. For this reason it is not uncommon for these two groups to agree on things.
The giant difference is the level of commitment to these respective priorities, and which one gets top billing. Doing right by the special interests and doing right by average Texans come into conflict early and often every session. Prioritizing the ruling class above the interests of the country on 10,000 little votes, and in 10,000 inside conversations, and in 10,000 turnings of conservative heads the other way when voters will be none the wiser is why our country is at risk.
For conservatives, a “Team Texas” priority structure is at least as important as subscribing to the right ideas, and maybe more important. This is a key political point that has yet to gain the important place it deserves in either the electorate or the political class.
Milton Friedman knew virtually every President of his adult life, and said Richard Nixon had the most comprehensive grasp of the free market economics to which he subscribed of any politician he ever met. The problem was, he subscribed to power more than his policy positions. He ended up funding Johnson’s Great Society, and he gave us the EPA, OSHA, wage and price controls, and more. Friedman said that he too quickly compromised his principles for political expediency. The temptation for it is great in politics.
Allowing yourself to be seduced by talk of how much someone likes conservative ideas is exactly how battle-weary conservatives are talked into doing something they know deep down to be wrong for Texas and against their principles. For Texas to be worthy of the leadership position that has fallen to it in the great socialism war raging throughout our government right now, conservatives must have the strength to be honest with themselves. John Henry Newman, a great 19th century English churchman, found the mark when he said, “We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”