How does Ronald Reagan fit in to the present-day strife among Texas Republicans?

It was probably not intentional, but four of the Texas House's most conservative Republican members marked the 20th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's death by very publicly breaking the spirit of the former president's "Eleventh Commandment": "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."

It happened Wednesday when Reps. Brian Harrison, Steve Toth, Tony Tinderholt and Nate Schatzline all but dared the House GOP caucus to revoke their membership for campaigning against Republican incumbents during the 2024 GOP primaries and runoffs.

Harrison, a second-term Republican from Waxahachie, called attention to the complaint filed against him and the other lawmakers with a post on X saying the four had been notified that they might be "expelled" from the GOP caucus for violating the rule that says members of the group may not campaign against other members. His post included the one sentence response that paraphrased Revolutionary War figure Nathan Hale's defiant last word before being hanged by the British army for being a spy.

"We only regret that we have but one caucus membership to lose for our country," the group told caucus leaders in writing before it was shared on shared on social media.

Harrison told the American-Statesman that he doesn't fear expulsion any more than he regrets working to defeat "liberal Republicans" who happen to be incumbent House members.

"I don't care about that," Harrison said about the prospect of being ousted from the caucus. "I care about preserving liberty for my kids and my grandkids."

To be fair, Harrison and the other House members who face being kicked out of the caucus are hardly the only Republicans, in Texas and elsewhere, who have flouted the so-called Eleventh Commandment. For more than a year, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan, both Republicans, have been in something of a political cage match after Phelan's lower chamber blocked sundry initiatives championed by Patrick, who rules over the Senate.

Also, many of the Republican challengers supported by Harrison and company were backed by Gov. Greg Abbott, who targeted GOP House incumbents who aligned with a solid block of Democrats to doom school voucher proposals last year.

Nationally, former President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee, appears to delight in calling Republicans who cross him personally or on policy matters RINOs, or Republicans in name only. Trump has used the term to deride Phelan and John Cornyn, the lifelong Republican who is Texas' senior U.S. senator.

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Reagan, who died June 5, 2004, at 93, is widely credited with coming up with "Eleventh Commandment" because he commanded a megaphone large enough to spread it far and wide. However, University of Texas historian and Reagan biographer H.W. Brands notes that the man who would become the nation's 40th president adopted the slogan during his first campaign for California governor in 1966 and acknowledged that it was originated by Gaylord Parkinson, who at the time chaired the California Republican Party.

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Parkinson put it out there as a unification message to heal the deep divide between the devotees of the late Arizona U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, considered the spiritual father of modern conservatism, and those from the GOP's more liberal wing, personified by then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.

It's not too big a stretch to suggest that the modern Republican Party, in Texas and elsewhere, might be heading for a similar rift. But it could be argued that the conservative heirs to Goldwater — and to Reagan, for that matter — are the "liberal" Republicans of today.

Also, not only did Reagan not author the Eleventh Commandment, but he was one of its biggest violators. A decade after his first gubernatorial campaign, Reagan launched a primary challenge to the sitting Republican president of the United States, Gerald Ford. The GOP nominated Ford, but it limped away in disharmony from the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Mo., and was defeated by a comparatively united Democratic Party headed by Jimmy Carter for the presidency.

Harrison embraced that part of the commandment's legacy as a rebuttal to those suggesting he is somehow a disloyal Republican.

"I would remind those people who seek to invoke Reagan's Eleventh Commandment that it is only selectively invoked by liberal Republicans trying to silence conservative criticism," he said. "Their memory is rather conveniently selective."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Ronald Reagan, the 'Eleventh Commandment' and the modern Texas GOP