"As Texas Goes" by Gail COLLINS: definitive answer to the TX & TeaBaggers problem
She is worthy to be along side of Molly IVINS, punctures the phony big talkers. Should be required reading, along with CARO's biography of LBJ, for all Democratic candidates *nation wide* - the perspective of the next generation of running against wingnuts.
*************QUOTE*************
[font size=5]As Texas Goes...:
How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda[/font]
Gail Collins
p. 5 Texas runs everything. Why, then, is it so cranky? …. …there’s been a Texan president or vice president for twenty of the last thirty-two years, so the lack of White House access hardly seems like an appropriate subject for sulking. …. …it’s a fast-growing, increasingly urban place whose citizens have nevertheless managed to maintain the conviction that they’re living in the wide open spaces. …. …You need that sense of victimhood because it creates energy and unity. You can’t build a Tea Party on good news.
p. 26 …division between the people who live in crowded places and the people who live in empty places. …. …if your home turf is crowded, you will need rules to protect you from all sorts of intrusive behavior — noisy neighbors… Basically, you want a buffer between your family and the rest of the world. That buffer would be government. Go regulation! But if you live in an empty place, it could take hours for law enforcement to arrive; carrying a gun is more practical. Government can’t help you and it has no business telling you what you can do with your property. Who could you hurt? There’s nobody else in sight. You’re on your own and you like it that way. There are a few problems with the empty-world vision.
p. 32 …the state would probably still be a mainly poor, rural economy if it weren’t for massive federal aid.
p. 165 Let’s go back to the Texas recipe for national prosperity: Spurred on by the wholesome national competition to steal each other’s employers, every state in the union should repeal all income taxes, make it extremely difficult for people to sue the company that sold them the canned hash flavored with ground glass, relocate to somewhere in the Sunbelt, preferably with a border on Mexico, and sneak into the left lane until they get as close to the orange barrel as possible.
*************UNQUOTE*************
= new reply since forum marked as read
*************QUOTE*************
http://www.salon.com/2012/06/09/gail_collins_texas_runs_america/
[font size=5]Gail Collins: Texas runs America[/font]
In a Salon interview, the New York Times writer who made Mitt's dog famous takes dead aim at the Lone Star State
By Kyrie O'Connor
.... ...it struck me reading your book that a lot of things such as Anglo politicians are part of a Texas that is going to disappear.
The question is how fast it disappears. One of the things that’s been so interesting lately in Texas is you find poor Democrats in Texas all saying we’re going to be great because the Hispanic population is growing, we’re already a majority minority state, and all of those folks are our people, and our time is coming again. [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]But Texas’ voting in general is pathetically low … And (in) the population of minority voters, Hispanic voters, their turnout is even worse[/FONT]. The new voting laws that keep being passed down are making it even worse yet. I was just reading, as you called, a story from the Houston Chronicle about the number of people who’ve been removed from the Texas rolls between 2008 and 2010. More than [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]300,000 valid[/FONT] voters were notified they could be [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]removed[/FONT] because they were mistaken for somebody else or failed to respond to a generic form letter or in some other way irritated the officials who are in charge of voting in Texas. Texas is not a place that seems to go out of its way to encourage folks to get out and vote.
(It’s) a state that’s going to be majority Hispanic, and what you would want to see is a state that’s preparing for this by doing a stupendous job of educating its minority kids … and that’s making a real effort to integrate Mexican-American Texans into the voting population, into the political activities of the state and into the business activities of the state. And I’m not seeing the love there.
There’s no Texas sacred cow that you left untipped, I think. You make fun of the Alamo.
Well, the Alamo was so important to Texas. Almost every kid in Texas goes on a pilgrimage to the Alamo. Nobody could go and hear that story and not think, “Oh my god, these poor people, oh my god what a tragedy, oh my god how brave they were” … but I must admit when I heard the story, I thought, “Oh my god, what a waste. Why the hell didn’t they leave and go help Sam Houston fight the war of independence?” They could’ve done that if you hadn’t had this guy Travis, obsessed with victory or death, running the show. And I think that that is perhaps a crucial difference, the idea that [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]the standing-up part is the most important part — as opposed to the actually winning the argument[/FONT] part. So certainly you would not want to ever make fun of the bravery of the people at the Alamo. But the idea that this was a good plan is one that I just can’t get my head around. ... ....
...Mitt Romney is in Texas right now on a fundraising toot. He’s going to come out of it with $15 million.
I feel a certain sympathy with Texas on this. It’s like New York, in that the candidates come here just to get money. Nobody goes to Texas for the votes, just to Hooverize the money. Not to talk to the voters.
I don’t get a sense of how Romney will play in Texas.
You know about my theory of empty places vs. crowded places. Romney is really a crowded-places kind of guy. He’s a hard sell in empty-places Texas. But he’s the GOP nominee, and it’s a very red state, so they’ll learn to live with it.
*************UNQUOTE*************
