Tea Party (Texas) Sets the Agenda, and Legislators Fall in Line

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/us/22ttteaparty.html

The ideological partnership of the raucous Tea Party movement and fiscally conservative Texas Republicans has dominated the agenda of the state lawmaking session that is sputtering to an end. Gov. Rick Perry embraced the Tea Party ideals before most knew the movement was brewing, and the conservative, anti-tax activism helped bring a supermajority of Republicans into the Texas House.

The (Tea Party) caucus agenda included balancing the budget without increasing taxes, securing the border and ending illegal immigration, asserting state sovereignty and requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls. In March, the Tea Party Advisory Committee issued a 14-point budget-cutting plan that included a state hiring freeze, suspending financing for parks and arts and historical sites, and cutting pay for state employees. When Republican budget writers in the Senate proposed dipping into the Rainy Day Fund, the group stepped in, calling on lawmakers. The plan was quickly shelved, and deeper cuts were made.

The Tea Party also found common cause with well-heeled conservative advocacy organizations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Empower Texans, which push strict conservative orthodoxy on budget cutting. “There’s a real coalition of external forces here that really put moderates in the Legislature — never mind the Democrats — in a real bind,” said Jim Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.

Democrats in the Legislature, pushed almost to the point of irrelevancy, have been reduced to using parliamentary maneuvers and complaining about the deeply conservative agenda enacted around them. Representative Jessica Farrar of Houston, leader of the House Democrats, predicted the budget cutting would create a “fiscal disaster” that even conservative activists would not like. “What happened here actually will erode the Tea Party,” Ms. Farrar said.

Republicans have completely ignored their constituents. Expect to see a shift left during the next election.

I don't think it's one of their best.

The Tea Baggers have NOT gotten what they wanted in many ways this session, and for this I salute the minority Dems and the non-Bagger Republicans as well.

Let's go back to January. The Baggers wanted one of their own to be Speaker in place of incumbent Joe Straus. Some Baggers went so far as to say that it was important to have a Christian Conservative as Speaker (Straus is a Jew), while strongly denying any bigotry, of course. Straus was chosen as Speaker, which meant he got to select the committee chairs (very few Baggers, if any) and members. This didn't stop the Bagger agenda, but it slowed it down considerably.

The number of bills enrolled, with only a handful of days left in the regular session, points more to gridlock than to legislators falling in line. In both the 2007 and 2009 regular sessions, over 1600 bills were sent to the governor's desk. So far this time, we've only got around 680. Are they all good bills? Hell no (this is Texas, after all). But at least there are only 680 of them.

Slightly off topic -- Perry and the Texas Public Policy Foundation have the ability to do a lot of damage that is outside the Legislature's control. Their efforts to destroy (er, I mean, reform) higher ed in Texas have me, and many voters, furious. Kudos to Sen. Zaffarini and Rep. Branch for trying to rein them in.