Merritt Calls For Speaker Summit

State Rep. Tommy Merritt (R-Longview), one of nine House members hoping to unseat Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick (R-Midland) yesterday called on all candidates vying for Craddick’s post to join him at a “Speaker’s Summit” to discuss the race.

“It is time for us all to come together and move this process forward,” Merritt said. “We can continue talking about bipartisanship and change and accomplish little, or we can show the people of Texas we are serious about leading this state in a new direction by actually doing something. That something is a Speaker’s Summit.”

“I don’t expect the Summit to result in a unified choice for Speaker,” he said. “But I do hope we can at least agree to a set of ground rules that each candidate will adhere too, a fair process for voting, and an agreement between the candidates that whoever wins, that person will put Texas above politics and will not punish those who entered the contest.

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“The reality is this is basically a split House,” he said. “That means power must be split. And it means partisan differences must be replaced with a system that respects the will of the House and the vote of every individual member.”

While it is an interesting proposition, I seriously doubt that more than half of the announced candidates would agree to sit down with Merritt–or anyone else in the race for that matter–to discuss anything.