Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan
ran the risk of poisoning his re-election campaign in 2026 when he gave Donald Trump enthusiastic plugs in recent days on social media in moves that could make it substantially hard to win support from Democratic voters who carried him over the finish line in a primary runoff in May.
After months of being insulted and berated by the former president, Phelan showered Trump with accolades following his speech at the Republican National Convention last week. Trump contended in a post on X that Trump made "a powerful case" for his third consecutive White House bid at the RNC.
After mentioning Trump by name in the rave review on the speech, Phelan declined to name the ex-president in a pom-pom post on Sunday night on President Joe Biden's exit from the race
"President Biden’s decision confirms what Republicans have known for a long time: the Biden-Harris Administration is unfit for four more years in the White House," Phelan claimed without any evidence. "Bowing out and replacing the presumptive nominee this late in the game has created chaos and division among their ranks over the past several weeks."
Phelan's emergence as a Trump booster and cheerleader
gives the impression that he's wiped his memory blank of all the terrible things that the presidential nominee said about him as his primary challenger's most prominent supporter. Trump - as a prime example - urged the voters in House District 21 in southeast Texas to throw Phelan out on the grounds that he'd done "an absolutely horrible" job during two terms as the speaker in Austin.
Trump portrayed the Beaumont Republican as an incompetent failure at "ELECTION THEFT and ELECTION INTERFERENCE" while blasting him numerous times for his role as the engineer of the "Fraudulent Impeachment" of Attorney General Ken Paxton in a case that fell apart in the Senate where it never had a chance.
Phelan and his top Republican allies promised GOP colleagues that the vote to impeach Paxton
would be safe because the case would be a slam dunk across the rotunda. Thirteen House Republicans lost their seats in the primary election or runoff vote in races that Paxton targeted in a self-styled revenge tour in the failed impeachment's aftermath.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick - like Trump and Paxton - wasted substantial political capital on the HD 21 contest as the leaders of the unsuccessful bid to give Phelan the boot in overtime. Patrick told delegates at the Republican state convention in San Antonio a few days before the runoff election that Phelan was going to lose. But the three-headed Trump monster was no match for Phelan, who won in OT with 50.7 percent of the vote.
Phelan apparently isn't concerned that the kissing up to Trump will make him look as weak and two-faced as Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio and numerous others who feasted on crow at the RNC after calling the former president an assortment of nasty names in the past. Republican Vice-President nominee JD Vance likened Trump to Adolph Hitler and characterized him as an "idiot" who's "reprehensible" before hailing him as an all-time great leader at the RNC.
The problem with the self-serving conversions is the fact that the Republicans like DeSantis and Haley have made it impossible to know when they're lying or telling the truth about their feelings for the GOP's presidential nominee for the third time in eight years.
The difference in Phelan's case is that he never sought to sully Trump publicly like some fellow Texans such as U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and former Governor Rick Perry did before singing his praises when they saw something to gain from that. Perry seems to be one of the few well-known Republicans who isn't scared of Trump after campaigning for Phelan this year.
Phelan may have thought he was playing mind games with Trump when he responded to his insults by professing his unwavering support for the former leader who tried to ruin him.
“I have voted for President Trump twice, and I plan on voting for him a third time. Trump himself has stated he does not know me nor does he know my record of fighting for Southeast Texans,” Speaker Phelan said in a statement before the runoff. “Unfortunately, my opponents have sought this endorsement in yet another attempt to get retribution against me for holding public officials accountable and defending the Texas House against outside interests.”
What Phelan may have forgotten is that he couldn't have won in the runoff election without significant crossover voting by Democrats in his district. Phelan would have little or chance to claim a third term with the gavel in January without the Democrats united behind him. But the speaker has been willing to gamble that on perfunctory Trump praise from which he appears to have nothing to gain and everything to lose.
more to come ...
