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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCharles Pierce: The State Republican Party in Texas Is Now the Craziest in America
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Crazy_In_Texas
The State Republican Party in Texas Is Now the Craziest in America
It seems almost pointless to mention this but there is simply no state Democratic party in any of the 50 states that is so clearly, obviously demented.
By Charles P. Pierce on July 7, 2014
If you want to see the clearest symptoms of the prion disease that has devoured the brain of the Republican party, the state Republican party is your Patient Zero. And, before a whole bunch of people in the Beltway media playpen begin minimizing this craziness because it pretty much shatters the whole idea of Both Sides Doing It without which most of those people can't get out of bed in the morning. This isn't four guys in camo in Idaho. This isn't a guy broadcasting on a short-wave from upper Michigan, or receiving the truth about chemtrails and the Illuminati through his teeth. This is the Republican party representing the state from which he got our last Republican president, and one of the biggest states in the Union. This is what it believes, as summed up with realit-based parentheticals by Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker:
Keep an eye on that last sentence. The Republican party of the state of Texas, a state which has 38 electoral votes and which will send 153 delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention, has endorsed the exact theory of government that was promulgated by the gun-toting yahoos at the Bundy Ranch. And there's more.
The Republican party of the state of Texas, a state that went for Mitt Romney by over two million votes, would like to do away with the Federal Reserve, and any Supreme Court jurisdiction in any case involving the Bill Of Rights. And, yes, there's more.
The Republican Party of the state of Texas, a state in which north of 45 percent of the voters identify as Republicans, would like to bring back spanking.
It seems almost pointless to mention this but there is simply no state Democratic party in any of the 50 states that is so clearly, obviously demented. This is the Republican Party. Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru are not. In fact, I think all those bold conservative thinkers of whom the New York Times thinks so much should bring their Big Ideas down to the next Texas state Republican convention and see how far they get. John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell, and especially obvious anagram Reince Priebus, who nominally presides over Bedlam, need to be asked every day which parts of the Texas Republican platform they support and which parts they don't. They don't get to use the crazies to get elected and then hide behind fake Washington politesse when the howls from the hinterlands get too loud. We allow ourselves only two major political parties. One of them is completely out of its fcking mind. This is a national problem.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Must be something in the water.
Unknown Beatle
(2,672 posts)phenomena for Texas. Texas has been blue until McMonkey stole won the governorship.
Please inform yourself before making false statements. Yes, Texas repugs in office are batshit crazy, but the people that I know in my own state are bright educated liberals.
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)Unknown Beatle
(2,672 posts)HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Fact: Texas oil money and RW extremism have a marriage that goes back decades.
Unknown Beatle
(2,672 posts)The entire population of the state of Texas is responsible for that. There are no liberals in Texas, it's just a myth.
elehhhhna
(32,076 posts)Faryn Balyncd
(5,125 posts)...statewide (impossible to gerrymander) popular vote.
Correcting this abuse, and accompanying bribery, was the reason for the 17th amendment.
Republicans aren't satisfied with control of the House, & of state legislatures through gerrymandering. They want to have the Senate appointed by gerrymandered state legislatures, and presidential electors divided by gerrymandered House districts. In short, they can't win honestly by gaining a majority, so they want to cheat.
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)of HL Hunt. Big Oil assholes in Tx have always advocated shit like that.
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)The Florida Democratic party is just as stupid. They deserve ridicule as much as the GOP.
kairos12
(12,862 posts)alarimer
(16,245 posts)Which is okay, if that's what you're into.
But the other kind is just cruel and only teaches that it's okay to hit.
Republicans are pathological. They really are.
snot
(10,530 posts)obxhead
(8,434 posts)The other accommodates the madness of fundamentalism and the profit of corporatism.
Are they the same? No. Do they have the same primary goal? Absolutely. Divided we fight while they reap the profits.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Paladin
(28,266 posts)Back in 1994, Galveston County Republicans publicly advocated the internment of AIDS victims in concentration camps. I say we credit the Texas Repubs for a half-step forward. OK, maybe a quarter-step.....
underthematrix
(5,811 posts)representatives to the House of Representatives and senators to the Senate?
IDemo
(16,926 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Arguing with these guys for all of this century online. Texas is by no means unique in this regard, the people I've argued with are from every state. It's the good old boy network with modern communications. We have mocked them in vain while denigrating our party and institutions just because we think they can never fall. They and they will at this rate and those who have enjoyed the bonfire will not be singing the same tune then, unless they are so comfortable they don't need democracy. I see that more often than not.
Too many people have been whistling past the graveyard, fighting with each other, while they kept to their goal to reverse all progressive legislation since the Constitution was ratified. Perhaps people were not taught basic history, so they take for granted that just because the value from the amendments and the laws based on them are 'truths we hold to be self-evident' there is a longer system of rule that has never left the world and undergirds a strong part of this nation.
We bicker over who is not doing things exactly the way we want to solve things, but forget who is being confronted with this. Too many enjoy a sense of complacency and the delusion that it can't be that bad, because it's just crazy.
Even this article uses that false meme. It's not crazy at all, it's just a different culture and economic system than we believe in. It is the ruin of all that millions have fought, yet we still savage each other. So at times I despair that the alleged left, and with a thorough exploration of libertarian sites, that will proclaim they are the only true liberals, get a pass in Democratic dialog. All the while they are working like termites to undermine the foundations of a liberal democracy.
We are being confronted with this, and we can stop it and restore democracy, but too many will NOT vote, demanding what they want when they want it and nothing less, right fugging now, or they will take their little red wagon of a vote and stay home. As I have said, they are not being affected by this regression enough to stir them to act, so they are part of the problem.
They will be the first to howl about the coming neo-feudalism they will be living in, and can't really be all that worried about it. Obviously, they are set for life, and this is a game for them. This system will get much more in one's face than any NSA fantasy and there will no way to stop them from controlling the most intimate parts of one's life. Clearly, they are removed from the issues of women and minorities, since they say they are annoying. Those who have been treated as second class citizens aren't ignorant about the threats to them.
Anyone who acts like they didn't see this coming, wasn't paying attention and put their outrage in the wrong place because it was safer for them.
JMHO. YMMV.