{"id":34014,"date":"2018-12-04T03:25:34","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T03:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=34014"},"modified":"2018-12-04T03:25:34","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T03:25:34","slug":"freedom-caucus-loses-a-member-more-to-follow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=34014","title":{"rendered":"Freedom Caucus loses a member . . . more to follow?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Jeff_Leach_May_17_MKC_TT.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-34015\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Jeff_Leach_May_17_MKC_TT-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Jeff_Leach_May_17_MKC_TT-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Jeff_Leach_May_17_MKC_TT-768x515.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Jeff_Leach_May_17_MKC_TT.jpg 850w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jeff Leach has just emerged as one of my favorite members of the 2019 Texas Legislature.<\/p>\n<p>The Plano Republican state representative has just bolted from the Texas Freedom Caucus, a cabal of far-right wing legislators intent on steering the Legislature toward ultra-conservative government policies.<\/p>\n<p>Leach says his goal now is to &#8220;unite&#8221; the Republican majority in the House. The Freedom Caucus &#8212; which morphed from the TEA Party wing of the Republican Party &#8212; has fought with fellow Republicans through the past legislative session. It tangled with outgoing Speaker Joe Straus and other GOP moderates who want to chart a more reasonable and, yes, &#8220;moderate&#8221; course for the state to follow.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s too bad Straus won&#8217;t be around after January when the next Legislature convenes. The new speaker-to-be, Dennis Bonnen, R-Arlington, appears at first blush to be more in the Straus model of legislator than the Freedom Caucus model.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s fine with me.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also quite fine with me that the Freedom Caucus&#8217;s numbers have been diminished by one; it&#8217;s down to just 11 members, a tiny fraction in the 150-member Texas House. These yahoos, &#8216;er, <em>legislators<\/em> do have an outsized influence on the rest of the legislative chamber.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/12\/02\/jeff-leach-resigns-far-right-texas-house-freedom-caucus\/\">The Texas Tribune<\/a> reports that Leach&#8217;s departure from the wacky Freedom Caucus appears to be an amicable one: &#8220;There appears to be no hard feelings between Leach and caucus leadership, at least publicly,&#8221; the Tribune reports.<\/p>\n<p>Even if there <em>are<\/em> hard feelings, my own sense is . . . too bad.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome back to the real world of legislative moderation and good government, Rep. Leach.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeff Leach has just emerged as one of my favorite members of the 2019 Texas Legislature. The Plano Republican state representative has just bolted from the Texas Freedom Caucus, a cabal of far-right wing legislators intent on steering the Legislature toward ultra-conservative government policies. Leach says his goal now is to &#8220;unite&#8221; the Republican majority &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=34014\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Freedom Caucus loses a member . . . more to follow?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,18],"tags":[6986,4531,4653,4728],"class_list":["post-34014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-state-news","tag-freedom-caucus","tag-tea-party","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texas-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34016,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34014\/revisions\/34016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}