Quorum Report's Harvey Kronberg is pissed off, sort of

The Monthly, in my non-paywalled article, reports how Harvey Kronberg, founder of The Quorum Report, is disgusted at the current state of Tex-ass politics. (The Monthly doesn't ask if it's contributed to that at all. Harvey doesn't ask that of himself, either.) The piece is good in noting the state will be hitting some budget caps, that passing them requires a two-thirds vote, and in the House, Dem votes will have to be sought out, giving them some degree of power.

HK: They’ve got two pieces of leverage there. One is that we’re going to be busting budget caps. You need one hundred votes to bust budget caps. The leverage is that it’s going to take two-thirds to do some things, and that—historically, anyway—West Texas Republicans have more in common with South Texas Democrats on most issues than they do with Woodlands Republicans. And that has been the basis of a workable coalition for a long time. Second, the Democrats couldn’t figure out why they should care [about losing chairmanships], because only six or eight were going to be chairs anyway. But Burrows giving them vice-chair authority in the rules, with the ability to set bills, shouldn’t be taken as insignificant.

I disagree on the ranking minority members angle, but, we'll see.

He also thinks Dustin Burrows will be better for the House in general than was McDade Phelan.

Phelan? Wonderful guy; I like him. But when he would go on the floor, he would only go to the frat-boy caucus [a group of younger white, male Republicans]. He never went to Red Square [the part of the chamber where Democratic liberals sit]. He never went to the old farts over by the members’ lounge. One of the responsibilities of a Speaker is to build a community. With Phelan, members never knew what the direction was from management; even if they disagreed with the plan, they didn’t know what it was. The chairmen didn’t feel like they were empowered as much as the frat-boy caucus was. He didn’t have any graybeards in the back hall with him. Now I see the pieces there for Burrows to build a community.

We'll see on that one, too.