Is this a winning formula for Texas Republicans? Closed GOP wants to add by dividing | Opinion

Every Republican state convention gets smaller.

That seems to be exactly how party leaders want it.

Republicans still dominate Texas elections. But the party organization is tightly held by a few die-hard activists, and about to get tighter.

Ten years ago, when the party gathering was in Fort Worth, the turnout was 10,000. We used to say it was the biggest political convention in the world.

But when this year’s meeting gaveled into session Wednesday, the attendance was 4,249. It grew by Friday to 6,700.

A generation of Republican winners has been completely eliminated.

The division in the party was never clearer than in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s introductory video Thursday.

It repeated the 2023 line from Paxton’s lawyer, Tony Buzbee: “The Bush era in Texas ends today.”

The late George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were Republican U.S. presidents from Texas.

Now they’re out.

Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn won his last primary by 1.2 million votes. He won the general election by 1.1 million.

But Paxton’s video blamed him and business leaders for debt, border crossers, inflation and LGBT rights.

Meanwhile, the video called Paxton “one courageous conservative” in a figure emerging from the light of a Christian cross.

Cornyn isn’t out. At least not yet.

He visited the convention meetings and exhibit hall Friday, but wasn’t scheduled to speak. Gov. Greg Abbott, who skipped the 2022 convention, was scheduled to address the half-full Henry B. González Convention Center exhibit hall by video.

Abbott’s predecessor, Gov. Rick Perry, is now out. See, he promotes gambling.

Republican voters overall like casinos. The margin was 46%-40% in a 2023 poll.

But the church conservatives now in charge hate gambling as much as they hate MSNBC. Or college protests.

Meanwhile, Kay Bailey Hutchison, a 20-year U.S. senator and, like Perry a former President Donald Trump appointee, is nowhere in sight.

Instead, the big applause is for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a radio-TV entertainer who wants to become a Southern Baptist pastor, and Paxton, a little-known state attorney general from Plano’s Prestonwood Baptist Church until the Texas House found 20 reasons to impeach him.

One of the week’s big topics was how to keep other people out of the Republican Party primary.

By an overwhelming voice vote, the convention passed a rule that would lock anyone out of the March Super Tuesday primary and runoff if they didn’t sign up with the party by early November, four months ahead.

State Republican officials are upset that 4%-6% of primary voters have a Democratic voting history and cross into the GOP primary to support moderates.

Republican party officials now assert that the party is a private organization and can close its doors.

Until 2003, Republicans liked open primaries. When Democrats ran the Texas House, Republicans crossed over to support conservatives.

But since the GOP took over, Democrats are basically just audience members with speaking privileges and good seats.

A few Republicans also switch into the Democratic primary and support moderates. But that’s only in blue strongholds like Dallas and Austin.

The GOP is now dominated by church activists. They are determined to achieve conservative purity.

Since the March primaries and Tuesday’s runoff elections decide how Texas is run, Republicans want to shrink the primary and elect even more-conservative lawmakers.

“We know democrats want to interfere in our primaries,” Tarrant County Republican chairman Bo French has written on his X.com account, formerly Twitter.

Former gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines of Dallas argued that the party is legally free to close the primary as it chooses, and that the party also can impose its own term limits.

“Texas Republicans can’t rely on career politicians to solve these problems for us,” he wrote in an online report, arguing that the First Amendment gives the party freedom to choose its candidates and participants.

It’s the same formula that has destroyed so many churches. You can never add by dividing.

You wonder if today’s Texas Republicans will ever produce another president.

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