BREAKING: Speaker Dennis Bonnen is retiring from the Texas House and will not seek re-election.

[Gothmog]

In 2017, the GOP in effect forced a very effective GOP speaker to retire in part because he was a Jew. The GOP picked a conservative idiot who decided to be an asshole on a host of issues affecting counties and cities. The new GOP speaker held a meeting with the head of a sketchy conservative PAC and promised that person press credentials that would allow that group to have a person on the floor if they would target a number of less conservative republicans in the primary. The head of the sketchy PAC taped recorded the meeting and that tape came out. Now the current GOP Texas Speaker is being forced out.

Link to tweet

Bonnen’s political future was first called into question in late July, when hardline conservative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan, who heads the group Empower Texans, revealed that Sullivan, Bonnen and one of the speaker’s top allies had met at the Texas Capitol the month before. At that meeting, Sullivan alleged, Bonnen and state Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, suggested Empower Texans go after a list of 10 House Republicans and told Sullivan his group could have media access to the lower chamber in 2021. Bonnen also disparaged multiple Democrats, calling one “vile” and another “a piece of shit.”

A majority of members were at first unsure of what to think about the allegations, given that Sullivan was a longtime critic of House leadership and that their new speaker had overseen a legislative session that was hailed largely as a success. The allegation that Bonnen had planned to politically target members from his own party also seemed to contrast what he had announced on the last day of the session: If an incumbent targeted another colleague, regardless of party, there would be consequences.