Texas intra-GOP fight mirrors national struggle

I might be alone in thinking this, but my sense is that Texas’s Republican Party squabbles involving the speaker of the House and a right-wing political activist is mirroring part of the national struggle that is engulfing the GOP.

Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen has been caught giving up the names of 10 GOP House members to a right-wing nut-job, Michael Quinn Sullivan, the head of Empower Texans.

Many within the Republican Party want Sullivan to release the contents of the recorded meeting he had with Bonnen and state Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, the former head of the Texas House GOP caucus.

What’s curious here is that Sullivan wants to torpedo “establishment” Republicans, replacing them with ideologues such as himself. He’s tried this for some time. Indeed, he and Bonnen and aren’t exactly BFFs.

Why might this mirror what is occurring nationally?

The nation’s Republican Party has been hijacked, tied up and held hostage by Donald Trump and his cabal of supporters. The parallel with Texas isn’t exactly precise, given that most establishment national Republican officeholders so far have been reticent about speaking against the president. Trump has bullied them into silence.

He’s even persuaded former harsh critics — such as U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — to performing as lap dogs who lick the president’s fingers whenever possible.

However, there remains a stable of actual Republicans — the men and women who continue to stand on principle — who gnash their teeth, grumble ever more loudly and actually speak out critically against the president.

Trump now has a potential field of three GOP challengers who will run against him for the 2020 party presidential nomination.

Neither struggle — whether in Texas or on the national stage — is easy to handicap. I don’t know whether Speaker Bonnen will survive the embarrassment of his offering the names of 10 of his colleagues as targets for the Empower Texans guru; I have moved from supporting Bonnen as the Man of the House to no longer giving a crap about his political future.

As for the national struggle, I want it to accelerate. I want the establishment Republicans to rise up and to do whatever they can to get rid of a president who disgraces his office every day he awakens in the White House.