It's all three, but did want to point out that your claim that

> It's obvious to see how there could be non-Republican-friendly results of faculty being easier to fire for, say, a controversial twitter post.

contains within it the idea that not being fired for a controversial twitter post or even free speech generally are either concepts that help Republicans or concepts that Republicans believe in, neither of which are true. Not for present day Republicans, historical Republicans, idealized conservatives or any shade of right wing thought except for a tiny insignificant rump of libertarians.

I think nearly everyone who says "I want more freedom of expression" leaves out the quiet part, which is "...for people who think like I do."

There are many, many examples of supposed "free speech advocates" trying to silence dissenting voices or criticism.

Under that assumption, it makes perfect sense that Texas conservatives, believing colleges are liberal bastions that spread ideas they disagree with, would see anything that reduces the power of college faculty as a win.

I don’t think “nearly everyone” is a correct assessment. The current conservative coalition includes a lot of Gen X and Millennials. In 2022, the D advantage among voters 30-44 in 2022 was down to 4 points: https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/.... These are folks who grew up in the 1990s in a much more permissive free speech culture. These are not necessarily the same folks as the ones in the Texas Senate.

Most of the types of speech the current conservative movement dislikes did not have a lot of people prominently voicing that speech in the 90s. They did have a lot of speech against them in the 90s.

It's easy to spot that backlash complaint - "I used to be able to say this in the 90s" - but from what I'm seeing, it's a mistake to think the motivation is "more speech for everyone" and not "this should still be allowed, but that needs to go back in the closet."

I don’t think that’s correct. Many of today’s “barstool conservatives” were 18-29 year olds who voted for Obama. It wasn’t taboo in those groups to say “gay marriage is fine.” I don’t they want that to go back in the closet. They’re upset because the culture shifted and they can’t freely respond to new assertions.

In a way it’s like tattoos. Trump rallies are chock full of them somehow. These folks aren’t clinging to their parents taboos, their reasons for being conservative are different.

(Of course that’s true of liberals too. A lot of the “follow the social norms and watch what you say” people migrated to the Democratic Party over the last couple of decades. This is especially apparent in affluent, highly educated suburbs where there has been major changes in voting patterns without necessarily significant changes in culture.)

I don't disagree, but it's still a bit puzzling beyond the just "political theater"/"retributional politics" approach:

* if they don't control the administration of the schools, this only serves to make it harder to hire anybody and easier to fire those who the administration doesn't agree with. Presumably conservatives. That's a net loss.

* if they do control the administration (or have a path to getting that control) then why not just hire people who think like they do and then enjoy the results of having those folks have tenure?

Yeah tenure probably protects conservative faculty more than liberal faculty at most institutions.

> * if they don't control the administration of the schools,

They control the purse strings.

Sure, but if that's very leveragable control, isn't "hire conservative faculty members who are protected from future changes in the political winds by tenure" better than "make all faculty easier to fire"?

No, it's not.

You have vastly more power in society by being able to remove your political enemies, than by being able to appoint your friends.

There's a lot of ways in which the latter can screw up - your friends might turn out to be less pliable than you wanted, someone might have been appointed who turned out to be a trojan horse, someone might have been appointed who was palatable to your goals a decade ago, but is now causing trouble, someone might have been appointed under your opponent's watch, etc, etc.

When you instead hang a sword of Damocles over their collective necks, they have no choice but to toe the party line.

"Hold onto power at all costs" is a strategy, sure, but the gotcha here seems to be that they won't be able to remove existing enemies.

It's only new hires who will be affected.

So "hire your political friends" is still important, since they can do some damage before you have a chance to fire them, even given you having additional leverage (and you can imagine a certain kind of academic who could ride that publicity to a lucrative position).

I guess the difference between my thinking here and the Texas GOP's is that I'm saying "make sure your friend are around even when you're not in power anymore" and they're thinking "we will be in power forever."