Committee appointments will be the first real test of the Straus speakership. How many of the 149 members can he satisfy? Here are some of the problems he will face: —Straus has said that there will be no retaliation against Craddick loyalists. Good luck in keeping that promise. The ABCs…
My source is one of the ABCs. He says that Craddick has been telling members who have supported him that he’ll be speaker again in two years, and, there being few secrets, this has gotten back to the ABCs. This is all I have on this subject for now. It…
The worst mistake that the Straus regime can make is to be sore winners. Doesn’t anybody learn anything around here? Craddick was a sore winner. He rubbed the Democrats’ and the ABCs’ noses in the dirt for three sessions. Laney once said, jokingly, that Craddick had done what he could…
A noncombatant Republican, not a member, sent me this e-mail about several conversations Craddick had over the weekend with supporters, which were duly reported to my source: Over the weekend, there were some telephone calls made by Tom Craddick in which (according to the report from one of the people…
Everyone wants to attend Craddick’s funeral, but the corpse is still breathing—barely. One more nail in the awaiting coffin: The Democrats published their names. It’s vital, as January 13 approaches, that the insurgents do everything possible to bolster their credibility, and the best way to do that was lay out…
I had a conversation with one of the ABCs. His comment: “It didn’t look like they were close to an agreement.” This does not come from an attendee, but from the proverbial “knowledgeable source”: The statement following the meeting said that eleven people attended. What it didn’t say was that…
A lot of readers have been commenting about my post, “The Kuempel Kandidacy,” saying that Kuempel can’t win because he doesn’t have, as one commenter put it, “gravity.” I think he means “gravitas.” My response was, You don’t need gravity—or gravitas—to be speaker. All you need is 76 votes. The…
Of the various permutations that could produce a governing coalition in the House, the two most likely are the Craddick loyalists plus the Craddick D’s, and the 64 Democratic loyalists plus the ABCs. The problem for the first group is the perception, right or wrong, that Craddick has stalled, and…