The emergence of Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus as a true leader has been like a breath of fresh air to Texas Republicans. Instead of talking about hot-button, marginal issues that divide us, he has outlined a broad vision for the future of Texas. By stepping out front and leading, he has moved the public discourse forward, at least for now. If you listened to Gov. Perry’s state of the state address, you can hear Speaker Straus’ vision in several places.

In doing this, he has taken a lot of heat from “outside” groups, groups that make their living on heated rhetoric and stagnation. This “heat” hasn’t been solely political in nature – much of it has been very personal, targeting his Jewish faith or his family business. Rather than strike back at the personal attacks, he has remained above the fray and become an example of living in a manner that the very people attacking him purport to believe, increasing his stature with the members of the Texas Legislature.

One of the policy areas that he has been attacked on is his refusal to bow down to the outside groups and not turn the Texas House into a miniature version of Washington, D.C.  These groups want the House to be divided along party lines, with Republicans controlling all committees. Speaker Straus has refused to go this route and continued the Texas tradition of appointing members of both parties to chair and vice-chair committees. See his list here: Standing Committee Appointments 83rd Legislature.

Obviously, he was immediately attacked by the usual suspects for this. One of my favorite is the attack by The Apostle, head of Raging Elephants, and master of incendiary rhetoric. In an email I received this past Saturday, titled “Traitor Joe” Straus Strikes Again — Committee Assignments, The Apostle complains about the ratio of Republican and Democratic chairs:

The Texas House committee assignments were released this week. Here’s a breakdown of Speaker Straus’ latest betrayal to conservative values.  Please keep in mind that the GOP holds a 95 to 55 seat majority in the Texas House of Representatives.

Number of Texas House of Representative committees:    41

Number of Democrats appointed as committee chairs:      14

Number of Democrats appointed as committee vice-chairs:       20

RINOs may argue that it’s “normal” for there to be power sharing.  Untrue.  Several committees have both the chair and vice-chair occupied by “Republicans”.

Number of committees where Dems are both chair and vice chair: 5

Committees where chair and vice-chair are Democrats:

Human Services

County Affairs

Culture, Recreation, and Tourism

Land and Resources Management

Urban Affairs

I suppose most of us are RINO’s in The Apostle’s eyes, at least those of us that are conservative Republicans but don’t follow in lock step with him. But I like the fact that the Speaker chose to make his committees representative of the people of Texas and didn’t follow the Washington, D.C. model. How could anyone argue that the Washington, D.C. model has been good for the country? I wish that the US Congress would adopt the Texas model and force people to work together to solve problems. Hey, it’s done pretty well for us, hasn’t it?

But the real point of The Apostle’s email isn’t about good policy – it never is. The real point is to raise money for The Apostle:

Action Item: RagingElephants.org is of the mind that Speaker Straus’ house district constituents – and, as many GOP primary voters throughout Texas as we can contact – need to be educated on exactly what this plutocrat has perpetrated through these assignments.  It’s our project to robo call House District 121 (Straus’ district) RIGHT NOW!  What’s the point of waiting for an election cycle to attempt to inform the district a year after the fact? Let’s hammer this traitor, RIGHT NOW!

Please donate to the robo calling campaign into Speaker Joe Straus’ district, today.

Send him some money and he’ll call harass those poor folks in Speaker Straus’ district sooner rather than later. You’d think The Apostle would learn from the past – last year groups from around Texas went all out to “primary” Speaker Straus and their guy got about 35{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the vote. But again, most of the attacks on Speaker Straus are to raise money for the outside groups, not about good policy.

No, for good policy, you have to turn to Speaker Straus. Even on national issues, such as immigration reform, where our two US Senators should be leading the way. They’ve taken themselves out of the game, choosing to cater to the loudest rather than the broadest. So we turn to Speaker Straus, who urges:

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus recently voiced support for immigration reform measures endorsed by the White House that included a pathway to citizenship for those already in the country illegally.

“I’m hearing a lot less divisive conversations about immigration and a lot more positive discussions about the work force, the economy and trying to keep things on track,” Straus said. “I think you have to go back to the Republican (state) convention in June, before the election. There were a number of us that were understanding of the awkward position that many people in this party were taking.”

Uh, oh, now I’ve done it. I’m really going to be labeled a RINO now. Fact is, I think that Speaker Straus is exactly right and that there must, in some form or another, be an opportunity for those here today illegally to become citizens at some point. I’ll let others worry about the details but sometimes, you just gotta step out and say what you think.

Do I always agree with Speaker Straus? Of course not. I wish that he had appointed higher profile Republicans to the Urban Affairs committee because if we don’t start learning to win the urban areas, we’re going to eventually lose statewide. I wish that he would have appointed someone to head the Public Education committee that was open-minded about vouchers or tax-credits to attend private schools. I wish he would’ve put my rep, Rep. John Davis (129), on the Appropriations committee. I wish a lot of things.

But what I know is that I like Speaker Straus’ independence and leadership. I hope that other Republicans look at what he is doing and get a little backbone themselves.