Haven't we seen this picture before? Speaker Straus performs well for most of the session, but when crunch time comes, he can't close the deal. His team has no cohesion (except for Geren), and there doesn't appear to be a strategy. So Straus falls back into his old persona of presiding rather than leading. It's happened every session he has been speaker. I wrote much the same story line a few days ago, ending with the prediction that Straus would end up putting Rick Perry in the driver's seat. That is exactly where we are headed.

UPDATE: The Nominations Committee has approved all three nominees the UT System Board of Regents. The full Senate will take up nominations next.

I walked in the east door of the Capitol yesterday with Senator John Whitmire. He asked if I was going to nominations. I said I was. Then he said, "I told them [the nominated regents], 'Don't even sit down. I know you're on a mission. And you're going to hurt your [reputation] very badly.'"

Kirk Watson carried the questioning in the early going. He got the candidates to agree that they cannot fire the president unilaterally, that the decision to initiate the dismissal of a president belongs to the chancellor alone. (For some background, read Jake Silverstein's exclusive interview with Chairman Gene Powell here.)