Here's a great comparison between what it takes to be a good Speaker of the House in the Texas Legislature as opposed to the U.S. Congress - especially if you have a divided majority. Straus was better able to control the Tea Party than Boehner.
- Click here for it.
- Click here for it.
Splitting the majority party in the House of Representatives leaves a potential speaker with two routes to the top. Lawmakers did it one way in Texas and another way in Washington, D.C. Right now, the Texas way seems to function better. In the Texas House, Joe Straus, a Republican, built a ruling coalition that included the Democrats and limited the power of the Tea Party Republicans. In the U.S. House, John Boehner, also a Republican, made his coalition out of the Republicans alone, shutting out the Democrats and empowering the Tea Party conservatives.
The 2010 elections were a turning point for both leaders. That election gave Republicans a majority in the U.S. House and Boehner, until then the minority leader, became speaker. Two years earlier, Straus ascended to the speakership by banding fewer than two dozen Republicans with most of the Democrats in an almost evenly divided House.
After the 2010 elections, he could have ditched the Democrats and relied on a large Republican majority to stay in office — that’s what Boehner did — but he stuck with one of the oldest rules in politics: Dance with who brung ya.
Boehner’s coalition has been the much more volatile of the two. U.S. House Democrats are largely shut out — the decisions are made in the Republican Conference, which then attempts to stick together as a ruling bloc. The strength of the most vocal conservatives is increased in the conference.
The Straus coalition, while still conservative, frustrates the loudest and most doctrinaire of the Republicans, giving the Democrats some power and shutting out the far right. Those movement conservatives are just as rambunctious as their federal cousins, but they’re outsiders instead of insiders.
It’s not a perfect comparison. Straus operates in a government with 100 percent Republican leadership. Boehner has to deal with a Democrat in the White House. But Straus has had a longer tenure and had more legislative success than his federal counterpart, in part because he has had more success managing his potential antagonists.
For a bit more on the topic: Analysis: The Hard Way to Win a Speaker's Race.
