“Did Perry lobby behind the scenes for Joe Straus to continue to be the Speaker of the House? I’m serious — I do not know if he did or not. The House members themselves vote on who is the Speaker. Perry can’t veto their decision on Speaker.”
Fair question...we have no way to know. But we do know that after 2008 the Republicans had a very slim majority in the House. Strauss rounded up a couple of RINOs, and then teamed with all of the DEMOCRATS to be elected Speaker (replacing a solid conservative). That should exclude him from Republican leadership COMPLETELY, in the future.
So 2010 comes around and Strauss runs again for leader. The conservatives alone have a majority in the House, and can easily drive him out - but they don’t - and he proceeds to carry out a VERY LAME agenda. In fact, the only voice that I heard back then saying Strauss should go was State Senator Dan Patrick...not a peep from Perry. As to all of those conservatives voting for Strauss in 2010...it is VERY HARD to vote against your own governor’s wishes, because of the leverage he has...and they did not.
So we had a really crappy session and only got a few medium-good items passed (like Voter ID), rather than the important stuff that I mentioned earlier. Heck we couldn’t even put a block on Sanctuary Cities.
And I will ALWAYS place the blame on the sitting governor, when he has a 65% majority in the state legislature.
Hopefully, the budget bill will pass today and we will actually reduce state government spending. That is a plus as is voter ID. However, I'd rather not have seen them dip into the rainy day fund.
The Texas House, where the big Republican majority is, passed the sanctuary cities bill, or so I thought. Perry had made passing it one of six emergency items needing passage early to keep it out of the last minute clog of legislation before the session ends. Will it pass the Senate despite Democrat opposition and stalling tactics? I don't know.