Sometimes all you can do is stare in bug-eyed amazement.
The executive committee of the Republican Party of Texas was in Austin on Saturday to finalize its first-ever legislative review, outlining a list of censurable offenses that some within the Texas GOP want to use to block certain House Republicans from the 2026 primary ballot.
Those Republicans, made up of delegates chosen by county parties, want to use the list to hold their elected officials to the state party’s priorities. But others see it as an illegal effort to deny officials from the primary ballot if they don’t follow the most fervent conservative activists’ aims 100% of the time.
Texas GOP Chair Abraham George told The Blast that he and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, who spoke to members of the SREC at a separate meeting with Gov. Greg Abbott earlier Saturday morning, have not discussed the party’s censure effort, a new “accountability” mechanism the state party approved at its 2024 convention. Still, Burrows likely knew the SREC members would be approving a hit list that could be used to keep “RINOs” from the ballot.
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The State Republican Executive Committee, or SREC, hunkered down in the Capitol auditorium and outlined censurable offenses that would apply to a majority of the GOP caucus, particularly Burrows’ top committee chairs.
The report itself doesn’t censure lawmakers. It’s a list of transgressions that county parties can use to censure their representatives and ask to bar them from the March primary ballot.
State Affairs Chair Ken King of Canadian, whose committee was a bottleneck for several GOP priority bills, was the subject of numerous censurable offenses. Even Public Education Chair Brad Buckley of Salado — who quarterbacked Gov. Greg Abbott’s No. 1 priority, school vouchers, across the finish line — was mentioned for not advancing a bill to deny public education to K-12 students who are in the country illegally, House Bill 4707.
The list of offenses include bills that failed to pass in the regular session that Abbott has added to the call for the special session.
A common theme throughout the meeting was that the report needs to be airtight because they may have to defend it in court, as George noted. Eric Opiela, an attorney helping several House Republicans with pending censures, was in the audience.
“We are talking about providing grounds for possibly keeping an office holder off the primary ballot,” said Rolando Garcia, an SREC member for Senate District 15 in Harris County. “If it looks like we’re really being shady and squirrely and multiplying violations just to provide grounds for keeping people off the ballot, that is very damaging to RPT.”
Can’t imagine why. I guess what I’d say is why bother with namby pamby watered down half measures like this? Just abolish Republican primaries all together and let the SREC pick the nominees for every office, to ensure they are all fully compliant with whatever the purity test du jour is. At least, until they inevitably get cold feet and stab you in the back. Betrayal is always just around the corner, after all.
Always fun to have enemies of Republicanism tell the party and its members what is best to do!