For 2306's look at interest groups, in this case a conservative group which is attempting to shift the Republican Party further towards the right.
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Empower Texans’ impact on the Texas GOP is difficult to overstate. With Bonnen on his way out, House Republicans are left headless as they fight to maintain their majority in a tight 2020 election. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — a top recipient of Empower Texans’ campaign cash, and, once upon a time, its top legislative ally — has accused the group of “destroying our party.”
Now, some warn, in addition to risking a new speaker who is even less sympathetic to its cause, the group behind a now-infamous secret recording may lose the trust of other Republican lawmakers.
But Luke Macias, a conservative political consultant often aligned with Empower Texans, said, “We’ve already won.”
“I definitely don’t think that conservatives are going to be in a worse position politically regarding ability to usher in conservative policies as a result of ridding themselves of a really corrupt speaker,” Macias said. “Some of Dennis Bonnen’s closest supporters are still trying to make the argument that keeping the corrupt speaker would have been better for Republicans. … At the end of the day, I think the Republican Party is going to be better off if we unite against dishonesty and not try to take down the guy who was actually quite forthright with how this entire meeting went down.”
“Shooting the whistleblower seems like a really bad idea for the Republican Party,” he added.
Several Republican members of the Texas House declined to be interviewed about the group, but some were less reluctant to privately name-call and dismiss it. A Republican House committee chairman compared the group’s recent surge in relevance to what market analysts call a “dead cat bounce” — a temporary surge in price that makes a stock look revitalized just before it spirals downward for good.
Disdain for the group has also been the clear message from the speaker’s office, whose spokeswoman, Cait Meisenheimer, has re-shared numerous tweets critical of Sullivan, including one arguing that his legacy “will be that of a treacherous snake.”
“It is unfortunate that a surreptitiously obtained 64-minute recording turned into a ten week investigation and ultimately ended with the defamation of a man’s quarter-century in public service,” she said in a statement last week.
