Dade Phelan Censure and GOP Hypocrites

Robert West | February 12, 2024

On Feb 10th the Texas State GOP issued a formal Rule 44 censure against Speaker of the House, Dade Phelan. While the vote was 55-4, with 4 abstaining, why did it take so long?

The GOP press release lists Jasper County as the first censure passed, Angelina County passed one on June 9th, 2023. Do you realize that there are women in Texas who got pregnant that day and have already given birth?

The SREC did not choose to pass that censure saying the Speaker of the House of Texas does not represent Angelina County, only his own district.  Forgetting that many of the SRECs at the time voted to censure Speaker Joe Strauss a few years earlier, even though they were not in the Speakers district.

When Orange County passed a censure in JULY of 2023, the SREC failed to concur, even though Orange County is in Phelan’s district and makes up more than half of the voters, the SREC said it was only one of three counties.

More than half the population of Texas is represented by the County GOPs that passed resolutions, censures and supporting resolutions against Dade Phelan at the time and the SREC refused to follow the will of the people. 

The link to an article I wrote in September 2023 has the numbers here.

Phelan Ignored Party Rules

Dade Phelan ignored party rules since before his selection as Speaker. He ignored the will of the people and the Party Platform. Ignoring the platform would have been a step up for Phelan who did the exact opposite of what was asked by 85% of Republicans in Texas.

The GOP has just voted 55-4 that Seating Democrat Chairs, pushing the sham impeachment of the Texas AG, opposing educational freedom, and failure to act on the border crisis are all subject to censure.

So here is the question, if all these things are censure worthy, how many state lawmakers are guilty of these same offenses? 

How many County GOPs will pass censure against their current state reps/senators? 

How many of these censures will the SREC ignore?

SREC and Applying the Same Rules

Is the SREC like Biden’s Justice Department? Will the rules apply to all the people that break them or just some?

Like the Biden DOJ, they have slow-walked this censure until AFTER the filing date for the primary, until AFTER most of the donations that have been made. 

If Phelan loses reelection, they will want credit but if he wins expect them to stand up and say, “Censure is useless, see?”

What they will not say is, “We should have acted sooner, before the filing date passed and before most of the contributions had been made, that would have made all the difference.”

A special shout out to both my SRECs, one of the four that voted AGAINST this censure. Donnie Wisenbaker SREC for SD1. Normally I would call anyone that failed to hold an elected official accountable a coward or a crony, but not Donnie.

Donnie actually believes he is smarter than all those other 55 SRECs put together as well as the 85% of Republicans that disagrees with him, he is not, but he really believes it.

Thanks to Christy Bentley SREC SD1, for voting the right way. I would have liked to have seen you do it sooner, but hey, better late than never.

Robert West