GOP House Candidates Throw Craddick Under The Bus Over Immigration

Once again, 2008 will be another year in which immigration is an issue in races for the Texas House of Representatives in spite of the fact that the Texas Legislature has no real authority to regulate immigration.

This time, instead of attacking Democrats on immigration issues, Republicans are actually attacking House Speaker Tom Craddick. Why? They are alleging that he is the person at fault for not getting many of the idiotic illegal immigration bills (most written by State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) from the 80th Legislation out of committee:

Critics of Tom Craddick are now blaming the House Speaker from Midland for all those illegal immigration bills that died during the last session in Austin.

Two Republicans in particular, former State Rep. Bob Leonard, who’s running in the GOP primary to challenge Democratic State. Rep. Dan Barrett of Fort Worth, and State Rep. Pat Haggerty, R-El Paso, began alleging this week that Craddick could have allowed most of those constitutionally-questionable bills to come up for votes if he wanted.

Interestingly, as PoliTex notes, both of these republicans are represented by Fort Worth consultant Bryan Eppstein (who is also representing Craddick allies). Evidently, Eppstein is using this as his newest strategy for GOP candidates to further distance themselves from Speaker Craddick. Novel idea, but it has its…well, shall we say, “flaws.”

Rep. David Swinford (D-Dumas), chair of the Committee the immigration bills died in, denies that Craddick had anything to do with the bills getting killed. The reality is that there is a lot more to the story about why the immigration bills never got out of committee. Evidently Eppstein knows this (it is not exactly the best kept secret in Austin), and, without explicitly telling the tale, is still going after Craddick over it.

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