Chief Justice Roberts casts the deciding vote. The individual mandate is constitutional because it is a tax, but without compulsion to pay. Virtually the entire act is upheld, except for certain provisions regarding Medicaid.

From ScotusBlog:

The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

* * * *

Chief Justice Roberts demonstrated great statesmanship in guiding the Court to this decision. He avoided the messy arguments surrounding the use of the Commerce Clause to justify the individual mandate and arrived at a solution that makes the health care system all-inclusive by imposing a tax on non-payers. The two most recent important cases decided by the Court reinforce the notion that you can’t judge the outcome of a case by oral argument. In the Arizona immigration case, various justices questioned why states couldn’t have a shared role in immigration policy with the federal government. But the decision made it clear that the Constitution gives the federal government full authority over immigration and naturalization. In the matter of the Affordable Care Act (I guess that the phrase “Obamacare” will gradually disappear from the political lexicon), the savants who commented on the oral argument agreed that the solicitor general did a terrible job in defending the administration’s point of view, but the result was in favor of the administration.

While this is obviously a victory for the president, it is also a victory for the many Americans who have health care problems. The current system, as the president has said many times, is unsustainable. It is hard to argue with that. The huge number of uninsured Americans, the spiraling cost of health care, and the cumbersome process of going through insurance companies to get coverage have made for a very creaky system. The Affordable Care Act addressed many of the issues that afflict the health care system. Yes, it is a huge and costly government intervention of the sort that many Americans–Republicans and Democrats alike–will decry. But it has the promise of actually solving a major problem in American society, something our political system has not done very well lately. I suspect that Chief Justice Roberts took these aspects of the case into account in arriving at a wise and far-reaching decision.

A recent story in the Houston Chronicle, by Peggy Fikac, explains how the women’s health program will be funded. According to the story:

The state plans to use funds from a Medicaid fraud crackdown and services deemed unnecessary, plus a hiring freeze on administrative positions in health and human services to pay for the $40.1 million program.

The rest will come from savings due to eligibility-system changes, an overtime reduction and state money appropriated for the program before Texas got on the wrong side of the federal government by banning Planned Parenthood and other clinics affiliated with abortion providers.

While this is certainly good news, it does not come close to solving the problem of how the Women’s Health Program will provide services to its clients. The problem has never been the money. The problem is the providers–or the lack thereof. Planned Parenthood was providing most of the health care services, so the question is, Who will take the place of Planned Parenthood? There aren’t very many options. One is FQHC’s (Federally Qualified Health Centers). Another is emergency rooms. The problem with the former is that the purpose of FQHC’s is to treat sick people. The problem with the latter is that providers are busy treating emergencies and don’t have time to deal with dispensing birth control pills and offering cancer screenings. The fundamental issue is this: As long as Planned Parenthood was around, women in need of services knew where to go to get the help they needed. (And, no, I’m not talking about abortions.) Now they don’t know where to go. That may be the fatal weakness of the program–and it doesn’t bode well for women.

Tagged: women's health program

The debate was hosted by KERA in Dallas. Shelley Kofler of the host station, Peggy Fikac of the Express-News and the Chronicle, Ross Ramsey of the Tribune, and Crystal Ayala from Univision were the panelists. The following summary is from notes I took during the debate. It is my best approximation of who said what–and who landed the best punches.

The first question was directed at Cruz.

There are 11 million undocumented aliens in America. There is a  crisis in illegal immigration. What would you do about it?

Cruz: First we have to secure the border. Second, I oppose amnesty, it’s wrong and it’s unfair to people who came here legally. Third, I celebrate legal immigration. [Follow-up: What about a guest workers' program?] I do not support any expansion of immigration until we secure the border.

Dewhurst: I don’t support a guest workers’ program until we secure the border. I would add 40,000 more Border Patrol agents

[This is one of several instances in which the sequence of the questions was such that Dewhurst was reduced to making a "me-too" statement.]

What about the people who are already here?

Cruz: I would encourage anti-sanctuary cities legislation.

Dewhurst: I passed anti-sanctuary cities legislation. We need to enforce all of our laws.

Question to Dewhurst: Should the federal government have bailed out General Motors?

Dewhurst: Washington is broken. Texas is an example of what good government should look like. I’m proud of the Texas miracle, we have the fastest growing job base.

Question to Cruz: Without the bailout, there would be 2500 fewer [GM] jobs in Arlington. Didn’t the bailout help Texas?

Cruz: I don’t support bailouts, period.

[I just want to point out here that the bailouts worked extremely well, that they kept the American automobile industry alive through the worst of the recession, that most, if not all, of the money has been paid back, not only in the auto industry but also in the financial industry, and that the opposition to them is an example of how ideology can be blinding, even when we know all of the facts. Isn't it clear to everyone by now that the bailouts saved the international financial system?--pb]

Question for Cruz: One in three Americans is underemployed, what would you do to help them get jobs, pay their bills, and pay off their student loan jobs.

–President Obama has waged war on jobs. He should start by revoking the ban on offshore drilling

–Dewhurst: Look at the contrast between Texas and Washington. I cut taxes 51 times, cut school property taxes by 1/3, balanced five straight budgets without raising taxes

Question for Cruz: Should unemployment benefits be extended?

–I don’t think the answer is more government. Taxes have gone up.

–Dewhurst: The Club for Growth [which supports Cruz] says the Texas tax structure leads the country. By cutting taxes we grow revenues. That was the lesson of Ronald Reagan in the eighties.

Question for Dewhurst: Is there anything your opponent has done that says he lacks integrity?

–Dewhurst: I’m proud of my record of doing what I said I was going to do. I never compromised my conservative principles.

–Cruz: The lieutenant governor served in elected office for over a decade, he made compromises with Democrats. He may have cut taxes 51 times but there was one very big tax on business.

–Dewhurst: I eliminated business taxes for 40,000 businesses.

Then the format allowed each candidate to ask a question of the other:

Cruz to Dewhurst: Did you support a payroll tax or a wage tax?

–Dewhurst: No.

Dewhurst to Cruz: When I got out of college, I volunteered to serve in Vietnam. I joined the CIA. You went to Harvard Law School and practiced law. What qualifies you to be a United States Senator?

–Cruz: I spent five years defending the Constitution [as solicitor general in Texas].

Question for Dewhurst on Social Security: The Social Security system is out of balance. How would you fix it?

–Washington politicians have kicked the can down the road. We need to raise the retirement age and eventually we will have to do means testing.

–Cruz: We must have entitlements reform. Older workers will get their social security. For younger workers, there need to be three changes. Increase the age limit, control the increase in benefits, establish private accounts.

–Question for Dewhurst: Texas has the highest percentage of people without health insurance. What would you do about it.

–Cruz: Repeal Obama care. First thing I would do. I think the Supreme Court will cut the baby in half, leave some, repeal some. We need fundamental reform with market based solutions, like a 50 state market for health insurance

–Dewhurst: I will throw Obamacare in the trash can. It will break every state. Tort reform in 2003 provided medical malpractice insurance for doctors, now 24,000 new doctors in Texas

Question for Dewhurst: What do we do about developing more energy?

–The EPA is out of control, wreaking havoc on Texas and other states. Texas is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, we need to expand our use of natural gas.

–Cruz: We should get the federal government out of energy exploration. For the first time, America can envision energy independence. We don’t have to rely on countries that hate us.  The EPA stands in the way. [This is sort of old news. The EPA did not list the sagebrush lizard as an endangered species--pb]

Question for Cruz: Do you support the Keystone pipeline, and do you believe that eminent domain should be used to allow the pipeline to cross private land?

–The problem is that Obama shut it down and killed jobs. Now the oil will be sent to China, it makes the U.S. more dependent on foreign oil.

The questioner tried follow-up questions on the subject of property rights, but Cruz did not really respond except to talk about a key Supreme Court opinion. Then there was a follow-up question to Dewhurst: What should we do for landowners?

–I worked for six years to get eminent domain through the Legislature. The pipeline must sit down with landowners, look at alternate routes, find a fair market value.

Question for Dewhurst: Mexico is our largest trading partner. How would you keep the gate open for commerce?

–We’ve got to keep trade going across the border.  We must close the border by tripling the size of the Border Patrol.

–Cruz: I support free trade, but there is a crisis on the Border. People die crossing the Border. More and more people are OTM “other than  Mexicans”

Question for Cruz: Should we cut defense spending?

–No. But we should stick to the budget requested by the Pentagon, stop Congress from spending above and beyond the budget.

Follow-up to Cruz: Do you support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

–We were correct to go in, but we stayed too long. We shouldn’t engage in nation-building. Don’t try to build a democratic utopia.

–Dewhurst: We went to war with a noble purpose. The Iraq war was based upon information about weapons of mass destruction. Obama is anxious to cut and run. We should follow overriding principles: (1) Only go to war if a vital matter of national security is involved; (2) keep our military as strong as possible. (3) Stand firm with our ally Israel.

Question for Cruz: Should the U.S. intervene in Syria?

–No. It’s not our job to intervene all over the globe.

–Dewhurst: What is in the best interests of the U.S? Allies are providing arms to freedom fighters. We would respond if Scud missiles are fired at Israel.

* * * *

I thought Dewhurst won the debate. Here’s why: On several occasions he was able to refer to his record of achievements while in office:

–”I cut taxes 51 times”

–”I passed tort reform in 2003, which brought 24,000 new physicians to Texas”

–”I worked six years to pass eminent domain”

–”I passed sanctuary cities legislation”

Furthermore, he was able to mention that he had volunteered to serve in Vietnam and that he had joined the CIA. These are impressive credentials, and it told viewers something about who David Dewhurst was that most of them probably didn’t know. He also pointed out that the Club for Growth has said that Texas’s tax structure leads the country, and the Club for Growth is supporting Cruz!

Cruz, when asked by Dewhurst, what qualifies you to be a United States senator, answered, “I spent five years defending the Constitution.” He might have elaborated about cases he had won–a ruling that allowed a monument for the Ten Commandments to be placed on the Capitol grounds, for example–but he didn’t. In short, Dewhurst was able to point to a record of achievement and Cruz was not. Dewhurst was able to expand what people knew about him, and Cruz was not. I can think of only one instance when Cruz had Dewhurst on the defensive, and that is when he asked the Dew if he had ever supported a wage tax? Dewhurst said no, and Cruz indicated that he had evidence to the contrary. If he has the goods, we will undoubtedly hear it from the Cruz campaign in later ads, but on Friday night, Cruz didn’t lay a glove on Dewhurst. He was more articulate than Dewhurst, to be sure, but that isn’t where the battles are won and lost.

Every idea that comes out of the Dewhurst campaign these days is a Rick Perry retread. Dewhurst has been reduced to reciting Perry’s lines. The latest effort to make Dewhurst sound like he is saying something new is a variation on Perry’s “take a sledgehammer to the ways of Washington” proposal during his presidential race.

Perry’s proposal to “uproot the federal government” included a part-time Congress whose salaries and office budgets would be reduced by half. Dewhurst’s plan is to reduce congressional pay and benefits, impose term limits on members of Congress, and impose restrictions on lobbying after they leave office.

I’m not surprised that the Dewhurst/Perry campaign is recycling Perry’s arguments, but it might stop to reflect that the Perry proposals amounted to a one-day story in the National Journal and then disappeared. There was no constituency for Perry’s ideas then, and there is no constituency for them now.

The Dewhurst/Perry campaign is trying to reprise its success in labeling Kay Bailey Hutchison as a creature of Washington in 2010 by hanging the same label on Cruz. It worked with Hutchison because she had been a senator since 1993. But Cruz hasn’t served a day in public office, nor has he fed at the public trough except as a state employee in the attorney general’s office. Not a rich source of perks.

I sympathize with the Dewhurst/Perry team in a way. They can’t find an opening to attack Cruz. He hasn’t left a lot of fingerprints. He’s a cipher with no public record. The only opening they have found is a lawsuit Cruz handled in private practice in which he unsuccessfully defended a Chinese company that lost a $26 million jury verdict, which went in favor of an American businessman. But recycling Rick Perry’s forgotten arguments is not the path to victory.

I was particularly interested in Jim Henson’s article in the Tribune earlier this week. As most readers know, Henson is the guru behind the UT/Texas Tribune poll. It addresses one of the mysteries of our times, which is why Texas voters seem to have very little interest in the major issues facing the state, and he notes the difference between the way insiders and outsiders approach the problems of government: Here is the beginning of Henson’s article:

Most insiders are political professionals working in the halls of government. In The Texas Tribune’s latest Inside Intelligence, they seem concerned with the kinds of problems that have been the province of government: above all, public education, but also infrastructure issues, like the water supply and transportation.

Texas voters, on the other hand, have recently demonstrated both in elections and polls that they are at best skeptical of and at worst downright hostile to what happens in those hallways. The problems that most worry voters lie outside areas of proactive government initiatives. They appear more focused on broad policy areas that are either outside such initiatives or point to perceived failure: the economy, jobs, immigration, border security. Public education is growing as a concern, but only among a small group.

These differences are especially pronounced if we compare the insiders with the subgroup of Texas voters exercising the most influence in elections right now: self-identified Republicans. GOP dissidents complaining loudly that the (Republican-dominated) political system in the state is tainted by insiders who have lost touch with the limited-government grassroots might have a point; people working in and around government have different priorities than GOP primary voters.

Here is how the insiders rank the major issues facing the state. The figure in parenthesis is the ranking according to Republican voters:

Insiders:

Education 30% (4%)

Water 16% (2%)

Political leadership/corruption 12% (6%)

Budget cuts 11% (3%)

Economy 8% (12%)

Transportation 8% (1%)

—–

The rankings of the most important issues as determined by Republican voters:

Border Security 21%

Immigration 18%

Economy 12%

No other issue achieved double-digit concern. Health care, the biggest single item in the state budget, was rated as important by 1% of Republican voters. Education got a 4% response.

* * * *

This is a very revealing poll, and congratulations to Henson and the Tribune for conceiving the idea of comparing the opinions of insiders and the voting bloc that dominates the state. It is as if there are two different states under the microscope here. One is the Texas that exists in the world of the Capitol, in which opinion makers worry about the issues that will determine the future of the state: education, transportation, water planning, health care, funding government. The other state couldn’t care less. Remember when the education budget was cut by $5.4  billion and everybody was wondering whether people who cared about pub ed would protest? Here’s your answer. Life went on as before. No groundswell of public opinion moved the needle of public opinion, or the consciences of elected officials.

What you see in this poll is the total disappearance of the Republican party that elected George W. Bush governor in 1994. That Republican party was a party of upwardly mobile professionals and soccer moms who cared about their schools and supported school bond issues. Today the optimism of those salad days has turned to fear and anger–with little interest in the future. Rick Perry understands this, which is why you never see him promoting initiatives like better schools and funding the state water plan. State government will not change until this generation of voters has passed from the scene. Ten more years of the last ten years.

It’s entertaining — a PAC-man figure goes through a maze gobbling up campaign contributions to annoying music — but I don’t think it is particularly effective. We live in the post-Citizens United age, and it’s not exactly a secret that politics is awash in cash. It’s been a long time since anyone has been shocked about Super PACs and other indignities. After all, Dewhurst has his own Super PAC and is wealthy in his own right. The degree to which Rick Perry’s ideas and campaign themes are prominent in the Dewhurst campaign is evident from this spot, which is reminscent of the governor’s 2010 campaign argument that “Washington is broken.” The idea is to brand Cruz as a Washington insider, the same attack Perry used against Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2010. But this isn’t 2010.

Here is consultant David Carney’s statement about the ad:

After spending nearly half of his career in Washington, DC courting Washington special interest groups, it comes as no surprise that Ted Cruz has become the candidate of choice for DC insiders. Texans deserve a Senator who will stand up to Washington and fight the out-of-state groups looking for a puppet in the Senate to advance their own agenda. By accepting millions of dollars of support from Washington special interests, Ted has turned his back on Texas. Ted Cruz’s insatiable desire to gobble up DC money will bring forth a clear response from Texas Republicans.

The Dewhurst campaign has found some new ammunition it may be able to use against Ted Cruz. It involves a U.S. Supreme Court case in 2008 in which Justice Anthony Kennedy did not know the law. Neither, so it appears, did  Cruz.

A week earlier, in the case of Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Court had ruled that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional. From the New York Times story about the ruling, by the newspaper’s  Supreme Court reporter, Linda Greenhouse:

When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states–not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either.

It turns out that Justice Kennedy’s confident assertion about the absence of federal law was wrong.

A military law blog had pointed out over the weekend that Congress, in fact, revised the sex crimes section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 2006 to add child rape to the military death penalty. The revisions were in the National Defense Authorization Act that year. President Bush signed that bill into law and then, last September, carried the changes forward by issuing Executive Order 13447, which put the provisions into the 2008 edition of the Manual for Courts-Martial.

So the Supreme Court had erred: The majority had stated that a child rapist could face the death penalty in only six states–not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government. But the changes in the Uniform Code of Military Justice were, of course, under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Why did this matter? Because, Ms. Greenhouse wrote:

This inventory of jurisdictions was a central part of the Court’s analysis, the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the “evolving standards of decency” by which the court judges how the death penalty is applied.

This is where Ted Cruz comes in. He argued the case in support of Louisiana on behalf of a coalition of ten states. In preparing for the case, he told Ms. Greenhouse, the existence of the military provision “simply eluded everyone’s research.”

Now, here is the political context:

The Texas Legislature had passed Jessica’s Law, which imposes the death penalty on certain child rapists. Dewhurst was a major driver of the legislation. Several states joined Texas in calling for justice in cases involving the rape of a child.

It was Cruz’s job to defend the law before the Supreme Court, but (as the Dewhurst camp will claim),  Cruz failed to do sufficient research surrounding the death penalty, with the result that Jessica’s Law did not contribute to the determination of “evolving standards of decency” in child rape cases.

Cruz’s oversight became the basis of an unsuccessful effort to get the Supreme Court to rehear the case. The request for rehearing noted that the oversight was a “significant error.”

From the Dewhurst camp’s point of view, Cruz’s “significant error” caused the Texas law to be defeated, and tougher penalties for child rapists did not occur.

Is Cruz’s failure to research the changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice sufficient to become the basis for an attack ad? We won’t know the answer until we see the ad. The argument will be that if Cruz had done the proper research and found the change to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the majority might have changed its notion of an evolving standard of decency and taken a tougher view of how child rape should be penalized.

In an earlier post, I raised the question of whether the Dewhurst camp had any more bombs to throw at Cruz. This could be one. If you agree with the Dewhurst campaign’s view of the incident, due to mistakes made by Cruz, the death penalty for child predators was ruled unconstitutional.  Cruz had failed to research federal legislation that made child rape a capital offense in the UCMJ – legislation that would have helped the case, since the Supreme Court made their ruling under the impression that there was no federal statute authorizing the death penalty for child rapists, when there was one.

As the Dewhurst campaign will try to portray this incident, internal e-mails from the attorney general’s office will show that Cruz had not done the proper research on this case.  Writing to another attorney about the mistake, Cruz said, “Wow, this seems pretty significant.  Is it right?  Did we ever uncover it?”  And he later wrote, “I need to call Greenhouse back this morning.  She may well write this in the NY Times that the OSG [Office of the Solicitor General] screwed up by not finding it – would love to have some sort of response, so we don’t look silly.”

Ultimately, if the ad reaches the production stage, Dewhurst’s argument will be that Cruz’s research resulted in the Supreme Court’s not imposing stricter punishment for child rape.

Not necessarily. Brian Chasnoff, in a story published in the San Antonio Express-News, writes about the mixed blessing that is the so-called Texas “Economic Miracle.” The event that has touched off angst in the Alamo City is the decision by Maruchan Inc. of Japan to locate a ramen noodles factory on the city’s southwest side, with the blessing of city and county officials, that would create 600 new contract jobs that include health, vision, and dental benefits. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the jobs will pay $7.25 an hour: minimum wage. This is a dilemma for a city that has a long history of being a low-wage town, not to mention for a state that ranks first in jobs that pay at or below the minimum wage. (San Antonio is also home to five Fortune 500 companies as of 2011.)

“In fact,” Chasnoff writes, “37 percent of all jobs added in Texas in 2010 paid minimum wage or less. Overall, about a third of all jobs in Texas fail to support a family of four.”

This is an old story in San Antonio. I can recall working on a story back in the seventies when local politics was in an uproar over an upstart community activist organization called COPS (Communities Organized for Public Service), one of whose objectives was to bring more high-wage jobs to the city. The local business community had commissioned a study that concluded San Antonio should concentrate on low-wage jobs, and COPS’s leaders had found out about it. Within a few years, Henry Cisneros would become mayor and the direction of the city would change permanently.

Since those days, COPS has become a fixture on the political scene, and city and county leaders have tried to set wage standard for companies wanting to locate here. Still, the median hourly wage of $14.40 an hour is $2.50 below Houston’s and $2.80 below Austin’s and Dallas’s. It is no coincidence that a city with such a low wage scale has the highest average credit card debt of any city in America: $5,177. The guideline is that companies seeking tax abatements should pay a “living wage” of at least $10.75 an hour. Maruchan is promising to make an investment of some $325 million, plus it will pay $5.8 million to local taxing entities.

Chasnoff quotes economist Keith Phillips, an economist for the San Antonio branch of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, as saying, “Low skilled jobs are not the problem. It’s low skilled workers.”

There is a lot of concern among local officials about whether the deal is worth it. Mayor Julian Castro sounded less than enthusiastic. “I’d be lying if I said this one wasn’t a close call,” he told Chasnoff. “There were strong arguments on both sides. But this was an unusual case. I decided to stand by it.”

It’s Rick Perry. Well, not exactly. What has happened is that Team Perry has taken over the Dewhurst campaign. Dave Carney is in charge. Mark Miner has joined the communications team. Rob Johnson is heading up the Super PAC. Everyone understands what that means. It means that the Perry playbook will be the textbook for Dewhurst’s runoff campaign against Ted Cruz. And the contents of the playbook have never been a secret. Chapter One is “Always attack.” Chapter Two is “If the first attack doesn’t work, try another one.” Chapter Three is “The only good use for earth is to scorch it.”

The unsolved mystery of Perry’s deep involvement in the Dew’s Senate race is why he cares. He must think  he can benefit by Dewhurst’s going to the Senate.

How? In the first place, it is to Perry’s advantage to have an ally in the Senate, assuming he intends to remain active in state and national politics. Texas’s senior senator, John Cornyn, and Perry are not close. Nor does Perry have a lot of friends in the Texas congressional delegation. He won no allies in the delegation by running for governor against Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2010 with an anti-Washington message that irked all the members of the delegation, not to mention rubbing off on many of them. Most members of Congress work hard. They regard Perry as a show horse, rather than  a workhorse. Cruz is certainly no friend of Perry’s, and he is also a rival for Perry as the leader of the tea party in Texas.  That leaves only Dewhurst as a possible ally.

Finally, it’s possible that Perry can gain from Dewhurst’s departure by the simple possibility that Dewhurst would no longer be light gov. The Texas Senate would have to choose a successor, and Perry, as governor, would be in a position to influence that selection, which could prove to be useful if he remains in office as governor.

As I wrote in a previous post, the issue of how to run against Cruz is crucial. Cruz is a grassroots candidate. Dewhurst clearly is not. He is the establishment candidate. Cruz has an edge in using social media to contact his voter base and get them to the polls. Dewhurst’s failure to reach 50% in the closing days of the primary race indicates the campaign’s lack of a social media strategy that can identify and turn out his voters.

Carney will follow his usual strategy of attacking his opponent in the media. This strategy has the dual benefit of weakening Dewhurst’s opponent and providing consultants with more income from the placement of advertising. But how many bombs does Dewhurst have left to throw at Cruz? They have already hit him with an attack on his representation of a Chinese company that ended up having to pay a large jury verdict to an American competitor. A claim that Cruz supported amnesty for illegal aliens did not appear to have much credibility. What else is left? If the Dewhurst campaign is out of bombshell revelations, they could find themselves on the defensive in the closing days of the runoff.

Tagged: dave carney, david dewhurst, Ted Cruz

In reading the last couple of days of convention coverage, I found two key takeaways that have been overlooked:

(1) Rick Perry is still very strong with the base of his party. He still connects with the rank and file when he makes a rousing speech, as he did at the convention in Fort Worth. Of course, Perry was addressing the 18,000 strongest and most loyal Republicans, and there was confusion about whether the boos when Perry spoke up for David Dewhurst, his choice for U.S. senator, were for Perry or for Dewhurst, or both. But Perry’s statement that he did not intend to ride off into the sunset was a warning shot across the bows of the wannabes, most prominent among them Greg Abbott.

It is still unclear (as it has been since he left the presidential race) whether Perry is just trying to find a way to remain relevant, or if he has any kind of plan other than his expressed interest in running for president in 2016.

(2) The second most important takeaway from the Republican convention is that the platform seeks to change the way the speaker is selected. The platform urges that the pledge card system, in use since at least the 1960s, be scrapped. Lawmakers give speaker candidates a leg up on the next election by signing pledge cards to signify that they will support a particular speaker candidate–usually the incumbent–in the next session. Obviously, the greatest beneficiary of this system is the incumbent speaker, who discovers who is for him and who is not (although any speaker worth his salt already knows). The platform would further urge that the speaker be elected by a secret ballot, thus making it less likely that a victorious speaker candidate can rain retribution on a member through punitive committee assignments. Next, the platform calls on lawmakers to do away with the pledge card system in which lawmakers swear fealty to an incumbent speaker in exchange for presumed favors to be granted at some future time. Finally, it urges Republican legislators to vote for speaker in caucus by secret ballot to protect members on the losing side. Note that this system applies to Republican members only. In 2011, the Republican members did vote for speaker, in a closed-door meeting, but the rules called for members opposing Joe Straus, the incumbent speaker, to stand if they were opposed to giving him another term. Obviously, this process was not akin to a secret ballot.

Readers with long memories will recall that the means of choosing a speaker was debated in the days leading up to the Eighty-first Legislature. The key issue was an amendment by Geren for a secret ballot on the choice of speaker. But the vote on the Geren amendment had to be public, and the incumbent speaker, Tom Craddick, had enough votes to prevail. I stress again that any speaker worth his salt does not need a vote to know who is for him and who isn’t.

Typically, a speaker’s race is decided when a candidate lays out his or her votes and the number is greater than 76. This was not the case in the Eighty-first Legislature, when election day passed without Craddick, the incumbent, laying out his votes. Craddick twisted in the wind during the weeks between election day and the convening of the Eighty-second Legislature, and when it became clear that he did not have the votes, he relinquished the chair.

It is inevitable in the age of the social media and the 24-hour news cycle that old forms of politics are going to give way to new ones. Members of the public are going to claim their right to be involved in the selection of the speaker, although ultimately their only tool is to persuade members how they should vote, and if what occurred in the weeks leading up to the Eighty-second session, that persuasion is likely to be none too polite.

In the end, the choice of the speaker will be made by the members, not by the public. The process may be different, but the outcome is likely to be the same as it was in the days when pledge cards were the deciding factor. The point is–let me repeat–any speaker worth his salt doesn’t need a pledge card, or the absence of one, to know who is for him or who is against him. Every speaker has a “team.” The speaker knows who is on his team. Bryan Hughes is challenging Straus for speaker (and other candidates may arise), but Straus knew long before Hughes announced his intentions that Hughes was against him.

The desire to be on the “team” is sewn into human nature. People want to be on the team because they want to get things done, or because they share a point of view with other members of the team, or just because it is natural to want to be on the prevailing side.

That will be true in the next speaker’s race, and in the one after that, and in the one after that. The members who are on the outside can do nothing to change their status. This is how politics works.

The likelihood is that, when all the ballots have been counted on election day, Joe Straus will have enough support to be elected speaker. He will have most of the Republicans and many of the Democrats, who have no one else to turn to, short of making a Faustian bargain with the Republicans. (A number of Democrats made such a bargain with Craddick, and they prospered for awhile, but in the end they had to rejoin the Democratic ranks or face defeat. It could happen again.)

The pledge card system, which has lasted half a century, will not last forever. Nothing does. The most ideological Republicans want to change the system so that it benefits Republicans and only Republicans–and in particular, not the elected class, but the agitators and the pressure groups who want to bully politicians into doing their dirty work. A lot of people believe, as I do, that Texas politics is headed on a course that will inevitably result in the replication here of the way Washington works, where the majority party controls everything. I hope it doesn’t happen, but if it does, remember, politics never stands still.

Tagged: gop convention, Joe Straus, rick perry, speaker's race