If this doesn't make you mad

[baldeagle]

You're not breathing. The Texas Tribune published an article entitled Red State - Purple Legislation.

So, here's the bottom line:

Texas Democrats exercised considerable influence over the legislative process during the 2013 regular session this spring, in contrast with their relative impotence last fall. While the November election results were unequivocally red - Democrats won a mere 12 of 31 senators and 55 of 150 representatives - the legislation passed during the session was decidedly purple.

In the state Capitol's west wing, House Democrats brokered a tacit alliance with the GOP's moderate/centrist conservative bloc, led by Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio. Liberal-Conservative Scores were calculated for legislators using their regular session roll call vote behavior (final 2013 House and Senate ideological scores and rankings will be published following the end of this summer's special session or sessions). These scores indicate that virtually all of the most prominent Republicans on the speaker's leadership team either were located in the GOP's moderate conservative wing (i.e., representatives with Lib-Con Scores significantly less conservative than those of more than one-half of their Republican colleagues) or, and less commonly, in its centrist conservative wing (i.e., representatives with Lib-Con Scores neither significantly more conservative or less conservative than over one-half of their fellow Republicans).

The proof?

Dems still win in a red state

Here are the numbers:

jones-83legelibcon-20130613.pdf

Win percentages for every legislator

(171.78 KiB) Downloaded 62 times

The guy who introduced the carry bill, Stickland, has the second lowest win percentage of anybody in either House. Until you get rid of Straus, conservatives are going to continue to be frustrated. He and every one of his lieutenants need to be primaried in 2016.

EDIT: Thanks for the correction.

[RoyGBiv]

Stickland (no "r").

Quite the eye opener... Thanks for posting (and depressing my cheery mood )

[baldeagle]

Apparently Speaker Strauss bought the votes he needed - including my own legislator, Angie Chen Button. http://gonzalescannon.com/2015/01/13/we ... to-pay-up/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The more I learn the angrier I get.

[suthdj]

Maybe the new Gov can step up to the plate and have some special sessions to insure things get voted on.

[baldeagle]

Maybe the new Gov can step up to the plate and have some special sessions to insure things get voted on.

I expect that's exactly what will happen. The Lt. Gov. has experience with the frustration of the Senate, and the Governor seems determined to get his agenda passed. But legislators MUST pay a price for supporting Strauss, because it's patently obvious that he is frustrating the will of the voters.

[K.Mooneyham]

Joe Straus seems to lack principles, good or bad, and seems to only care about making political deals for their own sake. I do not feel I could go through life that way.

[chuck j]

They get caught up in the game , just like someone that's a billionaire trying to make more money . They lose their soul .

[srothstein]

Might I point out that there is a significant problem with articles of this sort. We do have a very partisan split in the legislature, but most bills are not quite as obviously partisan as some people would think. Some bills match one of the parties platforms and have a counter plank in the other parties platform, but not nearly as many as some people would have you believe.

So, what this means is that a bill can be counted as a Democrat win in a Republican legislature when it is just good policy if it was introduced by a Democrat, even if there was no Republican opposition to the idea.

For anyone who claims that Texas was "purple" in its actions, I would ask them to look at each parties major issues that are dear to the core group and see what passed. Compare things like same-sex marriage, abortion, gun control, minimum wage increases, environmentalism, etc. I certainly do not see it as 100% blue, but it is not very purple either.

[Beiruty]

Now the dems should go hide under a rock for the defeat in Texas. We got Governor, Lte. Governor, and 2:1 majority in the both Senate and the House. So where is the blue in the Red state?

[baldeagle]

srothstein, I think you might have misunderstood the article and/or the graphs. A "win" is when a legislator voted the same way as the outcome of the bill (passed or defeated). The contents of the bill are irrelevant. When the Democrat minority has more "wins" than the Republican majority, something is seriously wrong.

For example, on campus carry, the Senate Dems vote no to prevent the 21 vote rule from succeeding. So, let's say the vote is 20 to 11. A "win" in that scenario is the 11 votes, because the measure was defeated. So Senate "victories" are sometimes because of the rules. But the House is clearly not that way. There are 98 Republicans and 52 Democrats. So how is it that the Democrats "win" 94% of the time and the Republicans only "win" 78% of the time? It has to be because either the Dems love Republican bills or some Republicans are voting with the Dems.

Given the overwhelming majority that the voters have given them in the past two elections, is it unreasonable to think that Republicans would "win" more than Democrats?

[mojo84]

This is why I get so repulsed by the pleas to continue with the business as usual we must play to the middle mantra espoused by the veteran republicans. When we operate in the middle or left of center, we as mere citizens lose liberty, money and representation.

It won't change until enough people start standing up for conservative principles.

[ELB]

I think srothstein has a point in that spectrum of bills that have any chance of passing is decidedly moved to the right in Texas, as compared to many other states. I don't think any of the pro-2A bills that passed last legislature would have a snowball's chance in August of passing (or even being introduced) in the New Jersey legislature, whereas the forlorn anti-gun hopes that Sen Ellis keeps throwing out would fly through in that legislature -- unless they were seen as too "conservative"!

But within that spectrum of what's possible, the Dems are certainly making the most of what they have with the help of Strauss and other more "moderate" Republicans. And yes the long term way to squelch this is in the primaries. As I said in another post, there are probably a number of other legislators that don't really want to vote for Strauss, but they do not want to end up on the losing side like "the 19" and lose their power in the house, so until they are convinced there are enough other legislators that will vote against him, they will continue to vote Strauss. Strauss will look very strong until everyone realizes the tipping point has been reached, then his support will evaporate and he will crash. Just like when the USSR fell, one day it was invincible, the next day it was completely vanquished.

I hope our new governor and lieutenant governor can exert some control in the short term, this legislature.