Fredricks loses bid to chair RPT

    Cathie Adams on Fox "News"

Montgomery County Republican stalwart Melinda Fredricks has lost her bid to be chair of the Republican Party of Texas. In a vote of the State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) yesterday, Cathie Adams was elected chair by a vote of 36 to 25. Adams will serve until the state convention in June, when she will have the opportunity to be elected by the larger body of delegates.

Fredricks, whose is a former SREC member and wife of The Courier Publisher Jim Fredricks, represented the lesser of the right wing fringe in the nomination battle. The vote on Saturday reflects something profound about the state of affairs in the RPT. It tells us that there is an intra-party struggle taking place between the far right wing and the not-so-right wing. The election of Adams undoubtedly tells us who will win that fight. Adams is currently the president of the fringe conservative group, Texas Eagle Forum. That alone speaks volumes. Instead of selecting someone who may have governed with some sense of practicality, the SREC has literally selected the Texas version of Phyllis Schafly.

If you aren't familiar with Cathie Adams or the Eagle Forum group, you need not look far to find out what she is all about. The last tweet on her Twitter page is linking to a YouTube video that suggests that President Obama is seeking to form a communist world government by signing the global climate change treaty in Copenhagen.  Here is her bio from the Texas Freedom Network:

Cathie Adams
Longtime leader of the Texas Eagle Forum, one of the religious right’s most extremist advocacy groups, Adams has argued for dropping children from the Children’s Health Insurance Program when they turn nine years old to prevent them from using health insurance to access family planning. Adams also has supported efforts to water down the discussion of evolution in biology textbooks and to censor information on contraception and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases in high school health textbooks.

We won't really know for sure until June, but if Adams remains as RPT Chair, this will represent a pivotal moment for the RPT. It may just end up being the moment in time when the metaphorical nail was driven into the metaphorical coffin of the RPT.

See also: Austin American-Statesman, October 24, 2009