Last week, the executive committee of the Texas Republican Party voted to officially censure outgoing Texas House Speaker Joe Straus because he had the temerity to disagree with Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on a range of issues.

The Texas Republican Party is a private organization. Its leaders can make decisions based on what they believe to be in the best interests of their members. However, the concept that an elected official can be guilty of insubordination for doing what he thinks is best for his constituents rather than the good of the party is ridiculous on its face. And it is pernicious.

Most egregious, in the eyes of the Texas GOP, was Straus' refusal to support the so-called "bathroom bill" for a vote before the House of Representatives. Despite the bill being bad politics, bad policy and bad PR for the state, the hyper-partisans now fully in control of Lone Star State Republicans saw Straus' apostasy as a bridge too far.

Straus, for his part, was vocal publicly and to his colleagues that the bathroom bill was unwise and would hurt the state economically, just as a similar measure cost North Carolina hundreds of millions of dollars in convention, event and tourism revenue.

But, for the sake of enforcing party discipline and serving the party first, Texas Republican leaders, like their brethren in Washington, have now completely abandoned the interests of the people. Along the way they have also abandoned the tenets and concepts that conservatives once revered, including economic growth and respect for individual and local decision-making.

Their actions are an embodiment of Elie Wiesel's belief that "the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." When pushing the bathroom bill, conservative leaders didn't think of the thousands of businesses, large and small, that would be adversely affected by its passage. They didn't think of the tens of thousands of working Texans who would lose out on shifts, tips and other compensation because large events, sporting and corporate alike, would look elsewhere.

Today, these conservatives are not driven by good policy or solid principles. Instead they have taken it upon themselves to serve as the keepers of party purity - and in the process have shown themselves to be shape-shifting chameleons.

While Republicans have held every statewide office since 1999, last week's decision by the GOP executive committee is the type of act that individual voters will remember. The party, and by extension its leaders in the capitol, Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Patrick, have admitted that the good of Texans, all Texans, takes a firm back seat to party loyalty.

Straus has hardly been an impediment to conservative governance. He worked hard to turn the two-seat Republican majority he inherited into the 40-seat margin it enjoys today. But Straus also works with members of both parties, preferring to bring people together rather than tear them apart. He is a pragmatist in a state whose politics are increasingly dominated by extremists.

For a state the size and population of Texas, its party leaders and elected officials simply must regain a basic understanding of what it means to govern. Republicans here, and nationwide, however, are increasingly uninterested in, if not outright hostile to, their fundamental obligation to manage the state's affairs for the good of those they represent and not for partisan advantage.

Perhaps that's the greatest, and saddest, irony. Conservative leaders understandably want to control the public agenda in order to improve life on the basis of shared beliefs on how best to do so. However, when they achieve power, they focus only on niche issues that appeal to a narrow base and that, too often, are antithetical to their long-stated beliefs.

Voters of all stripes should take a long, hard look at what the censure of Straus means. Practically, it means nothing in this instance. Straus is not running for re-election and will leave the House at year's end. However, Texans from El Paso to Bay City should take umbrage at the idea that a political party would attempt to formally discipline a representative for lacking party loyalty. Indeed, if politicians are more loyal to a party than to their constituents, the people owe those officials no loyalty come Election Day.

Straus did the one thing that the Republican Party in Texas cannot abide: independent action that takes into account the well-being of all the state's residents. As he prepares to leave the Legislature, Straus should take pride in the knowledge that when the time came, he put the people before party.

Reed Galen is chief strategist of the Serve America Movement. He has worked for President George W. Bush, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Ambassador Tony Garza. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News. Twitter: @samforus

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