Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Under the watchful gaze of a portrait of Sam Houston, Speaker Tom Craddick, right, talks with former Rep. Ron Wilson. (Larry Kolvoord/AAS).

Supposedly, the speaker of the Texas House serves at the will of the 149 other representatives who elect him or her. The current speaker, Tom Craddick, demonstrated this weekend that he serves at his will, not theirs.

Craddick had to fight to win election to a third term as speaker in January, but four months later he has not quelled members' doubts about his leadership. Rebellion broke out again Friday night and continued through the weekend.

The Capitol has not seen such an open revolt against a top legislative leader in more than 30 years, and in the turmoil late Friday on the House floor — with Craddick suddenly declaring recess and retreating for several hours to his office suite, and members hollering in protest and, later, extra state troopers posted at House doors — business proceeded for the rest of the weekend by fits and starts.

Repeatedly as presiding officer, Craddick, a Republican from Midland, used his interpretation of the House rules to deny any House member the recognition needed to make a motion to vote on whether to remove him as speaker.

Craddick moved from adept use of the rules to virtual dictatorship, however, when he ruled that his refusal to recognize a member to make a motion was not even subject to appeal to the House itself. As he put it at one point, "No, sir — the power to recognize is absolute." And later: "There is no appeal."

In short, in Craddick's view, the House that elected him speaker is not free even to attempt to vote him out — it now serves his will, not its own.

Craddick's refusal to recognize a motion to vacate the chair could be justified if the challenge were coming from some gadfly or a small group of members who clearly were intending only to harass him personally or disrupt House business. In fact, though, such a motion is so rare that House rules don't set out any explicit procedure for removing a speaker.

But dissatisfaction with Craddick is deep and widespread and cannot be dismissed as petty politics. The anger against him is non-partisan; most of those who have announced their candidacies against him for the next regular session, in 2009, are Republicans. The dissatisfaction is not ideological; just as many of his critics are Republicans, some of his supporters are Democrats.

Craddick must not have confidence that a majority of House members would vote to keep him speaker because he has steadfastly refused the easiest way to shut down the rebellion: Take a vote.

Instead, he hunkered down behind his assertion that House rules allow him to dictate who can or cannot make what motion. When the House parliamentarian apparently told him otherwise, he rejected her interpretation of the rules and she resigned, as did the assistant parliamentarian.

Craddick then hired new parliamentarians who would tell him what he wanted to hear. Terry Keel, a Republican from Austin, and Ron Wilson, a Democrat from Houston, are both former House members known as masters of the House rules.

(For those who happened to stumble on the controversy carried live throughout the weekend on local cable channels, Keel was the one who sat next to Craddick or whoever he had in the chair and told them how to respond to questions from the back microphone. He could be clearly heard feeding answers to whomever had the gavel, and Craddick repeated his words faithfully.)

This defiant speaker insists he is following the Texas Constitution and House rules. But he has made himself not only the judge in this dispute but also the jury by refusing to submit the question to the House.

Obviously, he fears what the verdict would be.