Texas in the last 5 days has been a national nightmare, but if you’re paying attention, it is also a microcosm of what is killing the GOP as a party. Sit back and relax, I’ll be happy to explain.
Texans have always been a prickly, independent crowd. One of my favorite juvenile authors, Richard Armour wrote, And then Texas joined the union, or as they like to say in Texas, the union joined Texas. A couple of decades ago, they were all riding around in their redneck wrecks, proudly displaying bumper stickers that read Don’t mess with Texas!
Yeah, great hype, and guaranteed to stir the Lone Star soul. But let’s look at reality. A couple of generations ago, the GOP (of course) dominated legislature of Texas wrote legislation that isolated the Texas power grid from the rest of the country. They made it impossible for Texas to export power to any other state, and for any other state to import power to Texas. And the sole reason that they did that was so that they would not be subject to any federal power regulations on their power companies. Don’t mess with Texas!
Texas didn’t just deregulate their power grid from federal regulation, the silly fuckers went whole hog, and exempted them from state regulation too! They literally left the foxes guarding the hen houses, turning all regulatory matters over to the greedy, monolithic power companies themselves.
The result has been a totally predictable nightmare. The power companies have steadfastly refused to insulate their pipes and networks, because that costs money. So, every tie the temperature gets below freezing for more than a few hours, the electrical grid, or portions thereof go down, and Texans freeze.
And here’s where we get to the current iteration of the GOP, and their monumental cock up in this crisis. People vote for, and believe in government for one reason and one reason only, to provide them with necessary services. And when those services are interrupted for whatever reason, they tend to get pissy. And when they do, a normal, functional government goes into spin mode, hitting the airwaves to simply explain the crisis, explain why the administration isn’t to blame, and outline plans to deal with the problem most riki-tik.
But what is the current, and past government of the state of Texas saying in response? GOP Governor Greg Abbott went onto The Manatee on FUX News, and tried to blame AOC and the Green New Deal at the same time that his own agency was refuting that obnoxious claim. Their former genteel GOP criminal Governor, Rick Perry, pompously went on the air to proclaim that Texans would freeze for more than three days to keep the federal government out of their power grid! I wonder if he bothered to check with any freezing constituents with children, with no heat, no water, no food, and no gas before he threw that shit out there. And their junior Senator tried to sneak off to Cancun Mexico with his wife and kiddies, not planning to return until Sunday when presumably, before getting outed and having to slink back with his tail between his legs.
This is what is going to kill the GOP as a national party. It isn’t so much their desertion of any kind of coherent governing principle, as much as it’s going to be the arrogance. People don’t ask much of their government, but they do ask that it work for them. And it isn’t just Texas. Remember, it was Florida douche bag Matt Gaetz that walked out onto the floor of the US House, wearing a WWI gas mask on the same day that a local constituent died from Covid. Their arrogance is leading them to treat their own constituents with nothing short of disdain.
Look at Texas itself. In 2018, Beto O’Rourke came within 2.3 points of ousting Cruz. The Democrats are ascendant in Texas. They are working with the grassroots to elect local Democrats, and then those Democrats are showing their districts how government can work for the people. And Georgia is the ultimate template. Grassroots organizing and ruthless organization turned Georgia blue in 2020 for Biden, and flipped the Senate to the Democrats. And now that the Georgia Democrats have the taste of victory, they’re just getting started.
The GOP has forgotten the one inviolable, age old axiom of politics, that all politics is local. People, even simple people who don’t really follow politics, still depend on government working for them! And when government stops working for them, then they vote for change. The way that the Democrats flipped the legislature in Virginia in 2017 and 2019 was that they filled every ballot slot locally! They gave a choice to people who had not had one other than the GOP incumbent for many cycles. And they sent them packing.
And now the Democrats are doing it nationally. They are recruiting, training, and supporting candidates for every slot on the ballot, local as well as state wide and nationally. And suddenly GOPasaurs who haven’t had to run a campaign for a decade are finding themselves in the fight of their lives. And losing. What’s the old saying? Pride Goeth before a fall.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
Rick Perry was never really genteel. I suppose by comparison, he seemed to be. He was governor before Abbott and we were treated to a bunch of his arrogance.
These are the days we could really use Molly Ivins. She nailed Texan stupidity and corruption like no one else.
I really miss her now!
Some parts of TX are on the Eastern Interconnect, and didn’t lose power for long. They’re farther from the political centers, and some find it easier to connect their electric grid to NM and OK, or AR and LA, than to the rest of TX.
The independence and self-reliance of the Texas republican voters doesn’t seem to be applied to themselves and their local representatives. Some will go to DC to confront that government body. But, they won’t go to Austin not or their county seat to demand what they need and to learn how it is that they aren’t getting it. Why don’t they, I wonder?
This is why they’re rushing to pass voter suppression bills: they don’t help people and don’t want to — they just want power. So they can’t get elected by merely presenting better ideas. They have none.
I feel sorry for the people who are at the bottom of the heap. They’ll never get out of the financial hole. With the other side of my brain I’m spitting mad that our tax money will be used to fix the stuff that Texas politics broke on purpose, just like they do when there’s hurricanes that hit and because there wasn’t city planning before building, there is massive flooding. They need to do remedial planning but they’re too stupid to understand that the rest of us are tired of fixing what they broke with malice aforethought.
I met people like Perry, Cruz and Gaetz in my fraternity in undergraduate college. You wouldn’t believe their disparaging, condescending remarks about people less well off than .. their parents, aka less well off “than them”.”Than them” of course deserves no credit for any success earned by the parents. I de-activated from that fraternity.
Texas is a perfect example of Southern pride run amok. So committed are these Republicans to the self-image of self-reliance that they never bother looking at the facts on the ground. And however stupid they may think their constituents are, the latter has no trouble understanding hunger, cold and price gouging when it happens to them. They’re not even getting the spin game right! When Beto is acting more like a Senator than Cruz and AOC more like a local representative than Gohmert, you’re failing on the PR front as well.
What will ultimately do in the GOP is not their collective buffoonery, but the mass realization, on the part of their poor white supremacist marks, that POC are not actually doing worse than they are. Every confidence game ends with a revelation.