The Nation: How Democrats Could Turn Texas Into the Blue Star State READ IT NOW WOOHOO!

This article kicks so much ass it's impossible to excerpt but I'll give you the first 'graph anyway NOW GO READ THE REST AND K&R YEAH BABY! :woohoo:

And enthusiasm can be contagious (another encouraging paragraph):

"Until three years ago, the Texas Democratic Party was just brain-dead and prostrate," says Southern Methodist University professor Cal Jillson, author of Texas Politics: Governing the Lone Star State. "They were beaten down. During the Bush years, people wouldn't even admit to being Democrats in Texas. Now they're up on their hind legs, feeling confident. It's the Republicans who are sullen and downcast."

Thank you again, Howard Dean.

Texas has a lot of active Democratic clubs, and among our complaints were the failure of the state party to support our candidates and the way the national party ignored us. I got involved when I started supporting Dean 4 years ago, and I met a lot of people who had been active for years. They were just lacking the support of the party.

Far from being afraid to admit we were Democrats, I saw a lot of defiance toward the Republicans, especially at the peace rallies. Cal must have done like the state and national party elders did, and only talked to the top, not the grassroots, where we were still adamantly liberal.

Nationally, during the 1980s and 1990s, the Democratic party saw Texas as an ATM. Fly in, host a big donor bash, then fly out (prominently mentioned is a Democratic former president and a certain leadership council that held sway over the party during that time). Rarely did anyone linger around to gladhand and encourage the rank-and-filers who were battling against Texas Stupid, and that is just so wrong, and against the principles of the party. It's good to see a party that again recognizes the folks on the ground and supports local efforts, which makes the national effort pay off so much better.

Obama will have a cake walk come November, and it's largely thanks to a years-long program to get modest funding for the locals, the "nose-pickers" derided at one time by Paul Begala, who seems to have thought better of that intemperate statement. Fat and happy Democrats, who are accustomed to the way it used to be (Pelosi, Reid, Feinstein, et al) had better get with the program. Because we ordinary citizens, having helped the national party so much, are going to expect to see some results, as well. Let's start with FISA, shall we?

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Back at Scholz Garten, Burnt Orange blogger Karl-Thomas Musselman hoists his beer in a toast of sorts. "The best thing that ever happened to Democrats in Texas is that the people who took over the Republican Party in Texas are running it into the ground," he says.

"They're out of touch because they're fanatically ideological," says editor Matt Glazer. "They've failed to govern effectively by every measure you can come up with."

"Say you've been voting Christian values, or along small-government Republican lines," says Musselman, who comes from a place where most folks have been doing just that. "At some point, you have to start thinking, What does it do for me? My taxes are not lower. My kids are not smarter. My job is not better. What are we getting?"

Right now, folks are getting a heaping dose of right-wing bluster from the Texas Republicans--most notably, and most disastrously, on the sticky subject of immigration. Party leaders like Senator John Cornyn and Governor Rick Perry have veered from Rove and Bush's formula and become fence-building border warriors. "They're just digging themselves deeper in a hole by moving right on immigration," says Cal Jillson. "The only prospect for the Texas Republican Party to remain competitive in ten years is to be winning 35 to 40 percent of Hispanic votes, along with 75 percent of whites and 10 percent of African-Americans."

But as the center of Texas political gravity veers inexorably leftward, GOP leaders like Governor Perry appear determined to go down, Alamo style, with ideological guns blazing. "The reason we lost our majority in Congress," Perry lectured the California Republican Convention last fall, "is not because our ideas lost their luster but our leaders lost their way.... It's a sad, sad state of affairs," he said, in a clear dig at fellow Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, "when...Republicans govern like liberals to be loved." No such coddling would be forthcoming from the governor of Texas. "We need to hold the line on what it means to be a Republican," Perry said, "which is, of course, being conservative."
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pnorman

To be honest, I like calling the backward rednecks of Texas names, but feel bad when one of the few brave Dems able to withstand the stench of stupidity (which I am sure blankets most of the state) comes on and takes offense at my joke.

Truly, I would like to retire all the oily transplanted New Englanders who only "play" cowboy stereotypes and just go back to making fun of Floridians.

Come on Texas, don't let the GOP redistrict you back to the 1980's!

Vote all the GOP out and go back to being the blue state you used to be, we miss you!

Love, California.