Everyone of Straus’ lieutenants should be primaries and this should be exhibit #1.
But. The Conservatives in the Texas House fight all wrong. Straus sets up 2-3 primary opponents each election season against visible conservatives. They all freak out and the conservative movement spends all its primary money defending those seats. It’s a win-win for Straus. He picks off a seat, great. If not, conservatives played defense another cycle: great!
It’s a great strategy and it would work even better against Straus himself because it’s essentially an insurgent strategy. If conservatives propped up 20 candidates against Straus’ lieutenants and gave them 50 grand each, it would change the House in just a few election cycles. For that 1 million dollars, Straus would have to spend 5 million to defend.
Even before the tide changed for Straus, it would change business as usual. If Straus knew he was going to be spending several million defending his cronies in a few months, do you think he’d give those primary challengers this kind of ammo?
Besides, win or lose, 20 new conservative faces this cycle, 20 next cycle, and next thing you know, conservatives have a bench.
I think we did a good job of isolating him, taking our time to scope out how it was going to get done, and putting in the time and effort to actually get rid of him.
Dewhurst didn't go away overnight. It took years of effort.
It takes a LOT of effort.
I even wound up running the 'Boot Dewhurst' thread list here on FR to help coordinate getting rid of Dewhurst.
I was just a tiny part of a very large effort.
So don't give up too quickly. This stuff takes YEARS to work.
But it does work, if the fight is joined, and the hours put into volunteering.
We've got about 2 years to work out a plan to get rid of Strauss.
Don't worry about believing anything, just join the fight and work hard to get rid of him.
Just your attitude of getting rid of Strauss, and helping to install the mindset helps.
Welcome to the long slog. ;)
/johnny