Walkout by angry Democrats halts work at Texas House
Were I to do this at my job, I'd get fired. If you're a member of the State Legislature, it just means you're a Democrat and you're tired of having the Republican majority force their version of political reality down your throat. To Democrats, the issue of redistricting is little more than a naked Republican power grab. Since a filibuster is not an available option, at least Democrats are demonstrating some creativity.
AUSTIN -- Outnumbered by House Republicans determined to pass a congressional redistricting bill, all but a few Democrats went into hiding today to keep the House from meeting. The House's GOP leader responded by ordering state troopers to find and arrest the missing lawmakers.
The House walkout not only blocked the redistricting bill but also action on all other bills on the calendar. The House cannot convene without at least two-thirds of the membership, or 100 members, present on the House floor under legislative rules.
Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick locked down the House chamber so that lawmakers already present could not leave, then he expressed his disgust with the Democrats.
"It is a disgrace to run and hide," Craddick said. After the roll call, he ordered that missing lawmakers be arrested and brought back to the chamber....
The lawmakers had prepared for the trip Sunday night and packed clothes to allow them to stay away for four days, a legislative source told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. That would put them past the deadline for preliminary passage of major pending bills that have been termed a priority by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
"We're leaving, and we'll stay gone 'til Thursday," one member from South Texas, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the San Antonio Express-News.
Perhaps if Republicans were more amenable to compromise and less prone to slash-and-burn politics, Democrats would not have felt compelled to take such a radical step.
Yes, it's the political equivalent of Ionesco's Theater of the Absurd, but this is Texas after all, where everything is bigger- even the absurd. When the going gets tough, the tough get going- to Oklahoma.
Republicans, are, of course, incensed that a group of rogue Democrats have robbed them of their quorum. Perhaps they would be better served by trying to understand why Democrats felt pushed to the point where leaving the state was their only available option. Perhaps if they could get it through their thick skulls that politics is not a zero-sum game, they might be able to negotiate an effective compromise. If you're going to conduct yourselves as graduates of the Lee Atwater/Tom DeLay School of Slash-and-Burn Politics, you can't pretend to be surprised when your opponents use your own tactics against you.
