Republican State Legislator Kirk England switches to Democrats

According to this morning's Fort Worth Star-Telegram Texas State Representative Kirk England of Grand Prairie has announced his switch from Republican to the Democratic Party. The district leans Democratic, as was shown when Kirk England, as the incumbent, only defeated the Democratic challenger in 2006 by 250 votes.

The 150 member Texas House of Representatives will thus be 79 Republicans and 70 Democrats, with one normally Republican district not represented at the moment. This is Kirk England's reaction to the dictatorial behavior of the Republican Speaker of the House Tom Craddick in the most recent house session. Craddick has been Speaker of the House since the Tom DeLay-financed Republican take-over of the Texas House in 2002, which led to the well-known runaway Democratic legislators as the Republicans used three month-long special sessions to redistrict the Texas Congress persons.

There may be hope for Texas yet, particularly with the national Republican Party dissing the Hispanics and all immigrants, Republicans everywhere dissing the African-American vote, and with Congressman Peter King (R-NY) who is an advisor to the Rudy Giuliani campaign announcing "Unfortunately we have too many mosques in this country." The Republicans seem to be getting frustrated or something and are letting their authoritarian, anti-Liberty and anti-minority opinions surface in the media.

But now, back to Republican nastiness

Odd how pleasant it has been to NOT be writing about the latest despicable or stupid action from the Republicans in Washington, D.C., or about the nastiness of the Republican Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives who has gotten so out of line that even half the Republicans are trying to remove him. Or at least a lot of the Republicans. But I can no longer resist.

The most recent biennium of the Texas Legislature closed yesterday amid efforts to remove him as Speaker. If there were an election, he would be gone, but using his discretionary power to NOT recognize motions by members of the House he avoided an election right up to the closing of the session. He will have to run for reelection as Speaker when the next session starts.

The next session starts in January of 2009 after all members of the House run for reelection in 2008, and Tom Craddick has the largest war chest of any member of the House. Craddick is expected to fund nasty primary campaigns against several Republicans who recently spoke out against his actions. The prediction is that the Texas Legislative elections in 2008 will be real scorched-earth elections. Never let it be said that a Republican doesn't know how to run nasty elections.