Speaker’s Race Post Mortem: We’ll Carry On

Had Tom Craddick been defeated today, it would have been the equivelant of winning a football game by two touchdowns with 10 seconds left in the fourth quarter. In other words, it was an up hill battle from the start.

That said, there are still positives and negatives about today’s events. I’ll hit the positives first.
First and foremost, today did show the overall strength and unity of the House Democratic Caucus. Fifty-five (55) Democrats were pledged to Representative Pitts. That shows a massive amount of unity among our caucus.

The other good part of that is it shows that, joined with the 13 Republicans I understand were pledged to Pitts at the very end, plus other Republucans and our Democratic brothers and sisters who supported Speaker Craddick but who will support our causes in other areas, we have the votes to do what we need to do for Texas on education, healthcare, insurance, CHIPs, tuition reform, etc.

More importantly, we have the votes to stop things like school vouchers, anti-choice legislation, and anti-consumer legislation.

While Craddick may hold the Speaker’s chair in the House, we—along with our moderate Republican colleagues—hold the power to stop bad legislation.

That alone is a major force for good government in Texas.

This also shows that, among the two parties in the House, Democrats are the more united. While we had a handful of our members on the opposite side of the majority of our membership (for various reasons), our Republican colleauges were far more fragmented.

Now, for the more difficult part of this post: addressing the issue of our fellow Democrats who stuck with Tom Craddick all the way through: on the procedural votes, the House Resolution Votes, etc., and even those who seconded Speaker Craddick’s nomination.

On this issue, I have little to say. First off, you will not hear me advocating for these members to have primary opponents. For one thing, evaluating something like that on one vote is simply not appropriate, especially when that vote is one that involved someone like Craddick, who has a record of intimidating people and forcing people to his side who otherwise have the good judgement not to do so.

While I am not pleased about Democrats who alleged that Democrats could have worked better with Speaker Craddick (Rep. Patrick Rose), at this point even I, the most partisan of Democrats, is willing to give the Craddick supporters a pass because I am not convinced they wouldn’t have voted otherwise were it not for the administration of fear and intimidation that has prevailed in the House the last few years.

Finally, we must consider that, though it may be a tough two years with Craddick in the chair, Republicans have unwittingly handed Texas Democrats our greatest victory.

The Craddicat will not be able to change his stripes, and will rule as he always has.  And, instead of the House flipping in 2010, it will flip in 2008. And, in that flip, more seats will flip than would under a Pitts speakership. Craddick remains a poison even unto his own party. His victory will cost his party 10-12 seats in 2008.

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