Who is keeping the Speaker out?

The question is circulating in light: Who is responsible for keeping Kent Williams out of the Republican Party? In a press release yesterday, the Speaker blames everyone but the one person responsible for his removal in the first place-himself:
 

While I would prefer that this matter be set straight sooner rather than later it is not in my control and although I am disappointed at the delay it is not something that I will dwell on

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It remains my goal to move past all the rhetoric and distractions and focus on issues that are important to the people of Tennessee while remaining true to the core principles of the Republican Party.

Speaker Williams knew when he agreed to be a party to the arrangement that would elect him Speaker that the consequences of doing so would be his official removal from the Tennessee Republican Party, and he even said "they'll probably throw me out" in his acceptance speech. Since Williams knew beforehand what the consequences would be when he chose to install himself as Speaker, it is terribly hard to accept this boo-hoo routine. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Kent Williams should probably be grateful that the Republican State Executive Committee has not yet taken a vote on the matter of his reinstatement and probably won't in March, either. Were the Committee to vote on whether to readmit Kent Williams to the party, the number of votes against his readmission might make for something of a political embarrassment for the Speaker. By not voting on the matter, the State Executive Committee is sparing Kent Williams a whole lot of grief-whether he realizes that or not.

There is one thing on which the Speaker and myself can agree, however, and that is the detachment of many people in East Tennessee from the political intrigues of Nashville:

 

Perhaps, it is because of my record, my holding to these core principles, that keeps the people here at home supportive of me and not the politics of Washington telling them to think otherwise. As you may be aware, the Carter County Commission and the Carter County Republican Executive Committee are fully supportive of me and have passed Resolutions voicing that support in no uncertain terms.

One would expect the Carter County political establishment to be supportive of Kent Williams. Not only is he the local Representative and now the Speaker of the House, but he has family members who are active in the local Republican Party there-they have a lot to lose in terms of their personal political "face" for every day that Kent Williams is barred from official Republican status. It seems that some people in Carter County (and elsewhere in East Tennessee) are mistaking removal from the Republican Party as being the same thing as removal from office. Some are saying that whether Williams is a Republican should be "up to the people." The choice of who to elect as a Representative is entirely up to the people of a given district, but the decision of a candidate about which political party to affiliate with is up to that candidate, and that choice binds the candidate to abide by the party's rules. If those rules are broken and the political party chooses to act punitively as a response, such is a consequence of breaking the rules. Association with a political party is a free choice, and the decision of a political party to disassociate with someone is also a choice of free association, regardless of the merits or lack thereof in making such a weighty-and hopefully extremely rare-political move. Political parties assist in the functioning of government, but they are not institutions of government and thus have the right to decide who does and does not qualify as a member.

It is very true that people in East Tennessee care much less about who is Speaker of the House and more about whether business is being done in Nashville the way that they would like it to be done. I myself have admitted that this past session turned out better than I would have expected, and I haven't even called-as some others have-for Kent Williams to resign as Speaker of the House. Williams has incurred the penalty which he knew would be coming if he did not vote for the Republican nominee for Speaker. Yet there is a rumor circulating (and at this point that is all that it is officially) that Williams may attempt to go around the rules legislatively by attempting to put forward a bill that would forbid party Executive Committees from removing someone's party credentials. Since both parties would have their rulemaking powers nullified by this kind of legislation, such a bill would be unlikely to pass both Houses of the legislature.

Kent Williams has an opportunity to build bridges and mend fences by first admitting that the way in which he obtained power was wrong. If he fails to do that, the only person keeping Kent Williams out of the Republican Party is Kent Williams.