The irony of the Craddick Dems

Alas, Tom Craddick retained his position as Texas speaker on Tuesday over his fellow Republican, Jim Pitts -- with the support of 15 Democrats in addition to all but a dozen or so Republicans.

I believe it was a mistake for progressives to try to turn the choice of Pitts (and earlier, Republican Brian McCall) into a litmus test for Democratic legislators, an effort which many of my fellow Texas political bloggers drove. In fact, this effort may have contributed to Pitts' defeat, as it likely helped make Republican legislators wary of publicly joining the Pitts forces. These GOPers may have feared a primary challenge funded by Craddick allies, but such a challenge would have been more likely to succeed due to the vocally Democratic nature of the McCall/Pitts coalition.

Texas Monthly's Paul Burka summarized this point on Thursday:

The fatal flaw of the McCall/Pitts challenge to Tom Craddick was that it was based on Democrats. The theory was that with most of the Democrats and fourth to a third of the Republicans, a challenge to Craddick would be successful. The problem was that the more successful they were in recruiting Democrats, the harder it became to atract Republicans beyond the dozen or so ABCs [Anyone-But-Craddick].

If the situation were reversed, Dem activists could understand why Dem legislators would be very hesitant to join up with a coalition dominated by Republicans in ousting their incumbent Dem Speaker. In fact, in such a situation, these activists would likely be driving primary challenges to any Dem legislators who joined such a Republican-dominated coalition.

So now, as progressive activists and bloggers consider fueling primary challenges against the 15 Craddick Dems (another mistake at this point, in my opinion), the irony is that if there had been more Craddick Dems, Craddick may well have lost his position.

Comments

[boadicea]

Blaming bloggers for a lack of spine in the legislature seems to me to be a stretch.

54 Dems held together for the procedural vote. All the Pitts side had to do was come up with enough to protect the voting secrecy, and they couldn't do that.

Now, the Iscariot Caucus sold out. Plain and simple.

What's yet to be revealed is for what and to whose benefit.

It's possible they can redeem themselves, if they get tangible, concrete results for their districts and the rest of Texas-and I don't just mean pork.

But that's not something that's going to happen in advance of delivery.

[Peter]

Thanks for the comment, boadicea -- and the welcome on Texas Kaos.

I'm still unclear on how the choice of one Republican over another can be considered selling out. As unseemly as Craddick is, would Pitts really have been much better in practice? The character of the GOP caucus is the same either way, and they run the show.

If it had been a Democrat running for speaker against Craddick, the choice would have been crystal clear. But this case was not, in my opinion.

[John cobarruvias]

Yea. Thats the ticket. Blame the bloggers for not having any balls.

What a concept.

Craddick is as corrupt as Tom DeLay. The only people you can blame are those who voted for this corruption.

If you cant have any balls and admit you dont have any balls, at least dont blame bloggers.

[Peter]

John, I certainly did not blame anyone for "not having any balls." All I said was that the tactics of some were, in my opinion, a mistake.

To gain something from this loss, I am hoping that we can figure out why it happened, despite reported extremely wide dissatisfaction with Craddick. The 15 Craddick Dems should not have been the margin, as they never were dissatisfied apparently. The explanation lies somewhere in the sixty-some GOPers who stuck with Craddick rather than pick another of their party despite the misgivings of many of them. My post above is a plausible suggestion for why this happened.