The GQP: Trumpist Death Cult

[DigglerontheHoof 21310]

13 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

this go here?

 

Gym will not face one single negative consequence over this.  Not one goddamned thing, and you all know it.   Hell, I bet he manages to double the contributions to his campaign bitching about how much he's being persecuted by the libs.

[Francisco 2.0 32441]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/magazine/texas-republicans.html

 

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Early on the morning of Oct. 19, an air-conditioner repairman named David Lopez was driving his small box truck in Houston, Texas, when a black S.U.V. slammed into him from behind and forced him off the road. After the vehicles came to a stop, Lopez heard the S.U.V.’s driver scream for help. He approached the vehicle, whereupon the driver, a man named Mark Aguirre, jumped out and ordered him to the ground at gunpoint. Aguirre had been surveilling Lopez for four days, convinced that he was the mastermind of a scheme to steal the election from President Trump.

 

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Aguirre’s investigation, it would emerge, was financed by Steven Hotze, a prolific Republican donor and Houston-area physician who made his fortune via “wellness centers” where he marketed “hormone replacement” therapies for everything from postpartum depression to hyperthyroidism, as well as a vitamin product called My HotzePak Skinny Pak. Hotze, 70, has long been prominent among the religious right for his opposition to gay rights. During the unrest following George Floyd’s death, he left a voice mail message for Gov. Greg Abbott’s chief of staff, urging him to authorize the Texas National Guard to “shoot to kill” rioters.

 

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Since then, Hotze had turned his attention to the specter of voter fraud. The state would later charge that he hired Aguirre, who was fired from his post as a Houston police captain in 2003 after leading a botched raid on drag racers, to assemble a squad of 20 private detectives. Their task was to investigate a voter-fraud conspiracy theory in Houston in the weeks before the election. For reasons that remain unclear, Aguirre’s investigation led him to believe that Lopez was transporting 750,000 mail-in ballots fraudulently signed by Hispanic children.

 

Spoiler

Lopez was not transporting 750,000 ballots fraudulently signed by Hispanic children. The air-conditioner repairman’s truck was carrying air-conditioner repair equipment. Fifteen days later, authorities in Texas presided over an election that has yet to yield any confirmed instances of widespread fraud. Republicans won every statewide office of any consequence.

A majority of Texas voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump in an election that a few polls showed Joe Biden winning in Texas by as much as five points. John Cornyn, the Republican incumbent senator whom Democrats spent more than $29 million trying to defeat, won re-election by more than nine points. Republicans held each of the 10 House of Representatives seats in the state that some election forecasters had deemed “in play.” With control of redistricting at stake, they maintained their state House majority, making major inroads in heavily Hispanic counties along the border — historically Democratic territory — to a degree that shocked even Republicans.

Abbott, in his capacity as governor, helped shepherd his party to all this success. And yet several months later, on the morning of March 15, Abbott declared that he, like Hotze, considered voter fraud a matter of singular emergency in Texas, and he announced his endorsement of several measures designed to safeguard “election integrity.” He was in Houston to deliver this announcement, in the office of a Republican state senator who would help advance the cause in the Legislature.

 

Through a floor-to-ceiling window, a small cluster of demonstrators protesting the restrictive measures could be seen gathered in the parking lot; one of them held aloft a sign reading, “Let Voters Vote.” Abbott opened his remarks by stressing that election integrity was “so important to our fellow Texans,” as well as “so important to making sure that we protect the fabric of our democracy.” His solemnity suggested the disorienting turn that events had taken lately for a man whose governorship, while not exactly overflowing with accomplishments, had until recently seemed accomplished enough. The Texas economy had hummed along for most of his tenure, the energy sector booming and the whole state flush with jobs. Even some Democrats grudgingly conceded the general OK-ness of things. “There is a pragmatic element of Texas, which is like, ‘Eh, everything’s OK, let’s not shake the apple cart,’” Mustafa Tameez, a Democratic strategist in Houston, said. “No harm, no foul.”

Abbott was not an especially riveting politician, but that was the point. The oil magnates in Midland, the philanthropists with orchid-filled foyers in River Oaks — they liked no-harm-no-foul, liked it so much that Abbott, after sailing through to a second term in 2018, was heading into his next re-election effort on a campaign chest north of $40 million. In 2019, an Associated Press review found that Abbott had collected more money from donors than any other governor in U.S. history. Within the state Republican Party, he had maintained credibility among both chamber-of-commerce conservatives and the party’s various insurgent wings, in part by evincing few core convictions beyond a commitment to avoiding controversy.

But six years into his governorship, controversy had finally caught up with Abbott. Several of them, actually. First there was the pandemic, in which his attempts to placate all sides, by turns imposing and denouncing various restrictions, led him to enrage just about everyone. The results of the election should have offered some respite, but four months later, many Texas Republicans remained unmoved by the fact of their own triumphs. Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud had become elemental in the Republican consciousness, and politicians’ viability hinged on their willingness to echo them. State House Republicans now fielded questions during town halls like those from a woman named Karen who asked, at a March event hosted by the state representative Dustin Burrows, how the Legislature planned to “change the way we vote in Texas.” (“It’s a great question,” Burrows responded. “After this last election, I think that people’s confidence in our election system is down, and rightfully so. ...”) The state G.O.P. named election integrity its top priority for the 2021 legislative session. And now Abbott was in Houston, signaling his commitment to fixing a system that by and large had just operated quite smoothly.

At the news conference, Abbott himself seemed to struggle to articulate why this crisis was real even as Texas remained plunged in another one that very much was. A month earlier, Texas was devastated by a winter storm, its power grid and water systems failing. In the weeks after the disaster, which left nearly 200 people dead, Texas officials scrambled to adjudicate blame; ultimately, the governor’s appointees to the commission that oversees the relevant infrastructure resigned. Those vacancies had not been filled by the time Abbott took up the cause of voter fraud.

“We’re no better prepared today than we were, what’s it been, three weeks ago? A month ago?” John Whitmire, a Democrat representing parts of Houston and Harris County in the State Senate, fumed. “It’s frustrating because, you know, we’re only here 140 days” — the Legislature’s biennial term — “and we don’t have days to waste. And when they play politics with the issues — I mean, Abbott’s down there in Houston trying to promote voter suppression, instead of having his tail up here. His butt ought to be in Austin.”

When I asked Abbott at the Houston event how he believed voter fraud had influenced election results at any level in Texas in 2020, he said the answer was “convoluted.” There had been some local election outcomes in the past, he stressed, that had been “altered” because of fraud. (There have been a few incidents in which suspected voter fraud may have swung local elections in Texas.) But as for whether he believed it occurred last year, he conceded, “I don’t know.”

As an unassailable citadel of Republican electoral power for a generation, and one whose demography and geography reflect the United States in miniature, Texas is often a leading indicator of political trends in the party. So it is a grim omen for Republican leaders that in this state, where the G.O.P. achieved what might be described as the best-case scenario for the party’s hopes in other states in the 2022 midterm elections, the state’s prominent Republicans are struggling against one another as if they had just gone down in a rout. Abbott, ostensibly the most powerful Republican in Texas, has seen his approval rating steadily plummet, reaching a four-year low of 45 percent in March, according to the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Though he remains broadly popular with Republican voters, in October his own state party’s leadership took the extraordinary step of protesting against him outside the governor’s mansion — “a striking display of intraparty defiance,” The Texas Tribune called it. Ever since, he has operated as if the protesters remain camped outside his door.

When lingering resentments over his Covid response collided with the winter storm, he abruptly lifted the mask mandate. Shortly after that, he visited the border and expressed his anger about the number of migrants there in a way that, rather than restoring his good will among conservatives, seemed to puzzle them. “It was almost — I don’t want to say Trump-like because I don’t think the governor can pull it off,” Chad Hasty, a popular conservative talk-show radio host in Lubbock, told me. “But you could tell that the governor was picking up on things that the president, former president, had done.”

Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his loss in the 2020 election, meanwhile, has placed his party in the awkward position of denying its own down-ballot successes in many states. This has been particularly striking in Texas, where the G.O.P. was arguably better positioned than Republicans elsewhere to escape his gravitational pull. Though it has a reputation, especially among coastal liberals, as a hotbed of fringe politics, the Texas Republican Party has long tended toward standard-issue conservatism. Abbott’s election in 2014, in fact, seemed to signal a retrenchment into politics as usual, following the 14-year governorship of Rick Perry, who, after his at-first formidable 2012 presidential candidacy collapsed spectacularly in the space of one forgotten agency, seemed to recede into an exhausting caricature of himself.

Abbott, on the other hand, had the great distinction of inspiring few emotions in people one way or the other. Before he became governor, his career included five years on the Texas Supreme Court and then 12 as attorney general. He had what his allies like to call a “judicial bearing,” which essentially meant that despite being deeply conservative — and despite once describing his role as attorney general, the post he held from December 2002 to January 2015, as going to the office, suing the Obama administration and then going home — he often left voters with the comfortably bland impression of a centrist. Abbott had a compelling story, too. In 1984, 26 and fresh out of law school, he was jogging in Houston when a rotting oak tree cracked and struck him, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. On the campaign trail, supporters praised him not only as someone whose politics were “a bit more balanced” than Perry’s, as one person told The San Antonio Express-News in 2013, but also a man whose experiences had made him “a true compassionate conservative.”

In Abbott’s first years in office, his low-emotion governance extended to his dealings with the state’s Legislature. Since the midterm elections in Obama’s first term, the G.O.P. has dominated state legislatures across the country, and they have often become test kitchens for Republican hyperpartisanship. But the unique structure of Texas’ Legislature for years had made it an exception to this rule. In the state House, the speaker is traditionally elected on a bipartisan basis. In both chambers, members of the minority party are awarded committee chairmanships. The system tended to elevate lawmakers like Joe Straus, the moderate Republican from San Antonio who served as speaker of the state House from 2009 to 2019, who earned bipartisan acclaim for advancing mental health care and developing the first funding measure in decades for the state’s water plan.

Then came the 2017 legislative session, which was quickly consumed by the so-called bathroom bill. Since 2016, when Republicans in North Carolina passed a measure barring transgender people from using public bathrooms that matched their gender identity, the issue had become a rallying cry on the right. In Texas, the measure was championed by Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor and former right-wing talk radio host who was chairman of Trump’s campaign in Texas in 2016. (In Texas, the governor and lieutenant governor are elected separately.) The bathroom bill was supported by the state G.O.P., but as in other states, it pitted social conservatives against the business community and allied politicians — including Straus, who kept the bill from reaching the floor.

In an effort to keep both factions happy, Abbott telegraphed his lack of support for the bill to business leaders while also scheduling a special session in which legislators would try once more to pass the measure. Straus, who to this point had enjoyed a relatively good relationship with Abbott, was not shy about his anger, comparing the forthcoming agenda to a pile of horse manure. His popularity among Republicans back home sputtered. Just before the special session began, the Republican Party of Bexar County passed a resolution calling for his replacement, citing his “nonsupport” of the party platform.

Straus was ultimately successful in helping kill the bill, but afterward he announced that he would not seek re-election. In January 2018, over two-thirds of the Texas G.O.P. voted to support Bexar Republicans in censuring him. For Straus, this remains a matter of pride. “The party apparatus has drifted so far to the extreme that it’s essentially a joke,” he told me. “Heck, I worked hard to be censured by those people.” What troubled Straus, however, was a feeling that the “clown show” increasingly seemed to be setting the terms in Austin. “I think Republican leaders are too often following these groups rather than trying to lead them,” he said.

Dennis Bonnen, another moderate Republican, succeeded Straus as speaker. When hard-line conservatives got controversial bills out of committee, he quietly worked with Democrats to keep many of them from reaching the floor. Bonnen apparently grew cocky enough about his political acumen that shortly after the end of the 2019 session, he called Michael Quinn Sullivan, an activist who helmed a far-right group called Empower Texans, to the Capitol for a meeting.

Funded by some of the wealthiest conservatives in the state, Sullivan’s group frequently antagonized, and sometimes primaried, moderate Republicans like Straus and Bonnen. During the hourlong conversation, Bonnen proposed a deal: If Sullivan agreed to stay out of the bulk of Republican primaries in 2020, Bonnen would give Empower Texans media access to the House floor during the next session, which would allow them to approach lawmakers and staff members more freely. He also said there were 10 House Republicans he didn’t mind Sullivan going after. And he proceeded to disparage a few House Democrats, calling one a “piece of [expletive]” and joking that the wife of another was “going to be really pissed when she learns he’s gay.”

Sullivan was recording all of it. On Oct. 15, 2019, he posted the audio on his website. Seven days later, Bonnen announced that he would not seek re-election.

It is difficult to overstate the rush that conservatives experienced in the year that followed. “A couple of days before Bonnen threw in the towel, he was bashing heads in and ruling with absolute authority,” Jonathan Stickland, a former Republican state representative from Fort Worth, told me. “And it all changed in a split second.” A former pest-control specialist and one of the most conservative legislators in the state during his tenure, Stickland viewed the events familiarly known as Bonnenghazi as the dawning of a great establishment crackup in Austin. “That opened my eyes to a lot of different opportunities,” he said. “It gave me hope for the future.”

There was a sense that everything was finally coming together — the sense that, in Texas, Trump’s Republican Party was there to stay. The crowning of Allen West as the party’s new chairman only heightened this feeling.

“You can take your face diaper off now,” Allen West told me. I had just arrived, wearing a mask, at his light-filled office in the headquarters of the Texas Republican Party, in a midcentury office building on Brazos Street in downtown Austin. It was early February, and West was wearing a pinstripe suit and his signature wire-rimmed glasses. From behind his broad wooden desk flanked by the American and Texas flags, he radiated a kind of smug sereneness.

Meeting West in these circumstances felt somewhat startling, like encountering a character in the fourth season of a television series who was presumed dead in the second. The last time Americans heard from West in any official capacity was nearly a decade ago, when he was a congressman from Florida, serving a single term from 2011 to 2013. The first Black Republican to represent Florida in Congress since Reconstruction, he was elected amid the Tea Party wave and was one of its quintessential celebrities: a retired Army lieutenant colonel who still favored a military high-and-tight haircut and was invariably seen astride a bald-eagle-emblazoned 2005 Honda motorcycle. (Defending his choice of a Japanese make, he once argued, “As long as I put my American butt on it, it is American.”) He called people with Obama bumper stickers “a threat to the gene pool” and claimed George W. Bush “got snookered” when he referred to Islam as a religion of peace. Glenn Beck wanted him to run for president. Instead, he lost his bid to return to Congress in a bitter race against the Democrat Patrick Murphy.

West somewhat quietly departed Florida for Texas after his loss, moving to Dallas to helm a free-market think tank until its operations ceased in 2017. By 2019, he had managed to draw attention once more to the question of his political future, revealing on his YouTube channel that while he most certainly did not move to Texas to seek office, he could no longer ignore the fact of his “calling” to run for something, anything, be it the House, Senate or party chairmanship. As he tells it, conservatives had long been deprived of a “voice” in Texas, and he took it upon himself to restore it. “And I have to tell you,” West said, “that’s kind of like the leadership that you saw with President Trump — getting out there and connecting with people.”

West no longer rides motorcycles — not since he was injured in a crash last May, shortly after taking part in a ride protesting Texas’ coronavirus lockdown. But the concussion and fractured bones and lacerations did not stop him from campaigning for party chair, his overriding message a promise to make the Texas G.O.P. “relevant again.”

As in 2010, West’s instinct for political opportunity and sense of timing were impeccable. He was in the final stretch of his campaign as the coronavirus was causing trouble for Abbott. During the early days of the virus — which to date has caused the deaths of more than 50,000 Texans — the governor appeared incapable of clearly communicating a path forward. There was the stay-at-home order that he seemed hellbent on calling anything but a stay-at-home order; mask mandates that went from being enforceable at the local level to forbidden at the local level to sort of enforceable at the local level to required statewide. “The problem is in a situation like this, you can’t have it both ways,” Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor, secretary of housing and urban development under Obama and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, told me at the time. “You can either act decisively, or you can leave your state unsafe. And right now he’s chosen to leave Texas unsafe.”

 

It wasn’t just Democrats who were angry. When a Dallas hairdresser named Shelley Luther refused to abide Abbott’s stay-at-home order and a local court order to close her salon in April 2020, she was, in accordance with Abbott’s order, sent to jail. Conservatives revolted, and Abbott scrambled to invalidate the penalties that he himself had mandated, but the damage was done. In August, several months after her release, Luther declared her candidacy in a special election for the State Senate. She campaigned as though she were running against Abbott himself, excoriating him as a “tyrant governor” who had “embarrassed us completely.” Over the course of a few months, Abbott’s approval rating fell by more than eight points.

West set out to accelerate Abbott’s troubles. In his final pitch to delegates before his election in July, he promised to defend the party against the “tyranny” of Abbott’s “executive orders and mandates.” After years of frustration with Republican leadership more broadly, “it was already there, that tension,” Jonathan Stickland said. “What it felt like was the balloon was pricked and finally exploded.”

Luther lost her runoff race to an Abbott-backed Republican in December, but this has not prompted any great reckoning among Abbott’s critics. At his office in March, West registered his disappointment with Abbott and particularly his recent State of the State address, in which Abbott listed his priorities for the legislative session — only one of which, West noted, matched the party’s. “Election integrity, it’s our No. 1 priority,” he said. “I believe it was his No. 4 priority.”

Theoretically, West’s priorities for the 87th session of the Texas Legislature should not be of great consequence to Abbott. When was the last time you knew the name of a state party chair? Ask even a politically inclined Texan, and he or she might — might — say the late 1990s, when the late Susan Weddington became the first woman to lead a major party in Texas. In a single year, she raised $16 million for the G.O.P., an internal party record that still stands.

This was what party chairs did then, for the most part: raise money. But in 2002 campaign-finance reform capped individual and corporate donations to party committees. “We’ve seen a pretty steady decline in their influence since then,” Wayne Hamilton, a Republican consultant and a former executive director of the Texas G.O.P., told me. “It became the case that if someone told you they were running for the chair, you said, ‘Yeah, yeah, OK,’ because nobody really cares anymore.”

State party conventions — the biennial gatherings where delegates elect their leadership and determine the party’s platform — became more ceremonial than anything else, an outpost for activist types who bore little resemblance to the party’s average voter. Still, they tended to be team players. “The governor effectively selected the state-party chairman, and the other members ratified his choice,” Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, told me. “In the past, you simply would not have had people like Kelli Ward or Allen West becoming state party chairs. That is the influence of Donald Trump.” (Before becoming chairwoman of the Arizona G.O.P. in 2019, Kelli Ward was best known for her unsuccessful attempts to unseat Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake and for using government resources to host a town hall addressing the conspiracy theory that the government was injecting dangerous chemicals into the air via airplane contrails when she was a state senator. McCain’s team dubbed her “Chemtrail Kelli.”)

On Oct. 10, West spoke at an anti-Abbott demonstration in front of the governor’s mansion in Austin. Some 200 people, almost all of them maskless, gathered for the “Free Texas” rally. Their signs featured such messages as “YOU ARE DESTROYING LIVES” and “ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT SOCIALISM” and “IMPEACH ABBOTT.” Clutching a microphone, West recited the party leadership’s resolution demanding the governor “open Texas now.” Explaining why he was criticizing his own party’s top official just before an election, he said: “True leaders don’t pick and choose when they do what is right. They do what is right all the time.”

Luke Macias, a consultant who has worked with many of the state’s most conservative legislators, credits Trump with inspiring a kind of awakening among grass-roots conservatives in Texas. Abbott, he said, “comes from the George W. Bush-John McCain-Mitt Romney school of Republicans who have run a pretty successful con game where you don’t actually need to provide tangible policy results in order to run on a conservative platform. And Trump messed that up,” he said. “What you’re seeing now is this shift of Republicans saying, ‘We know exactly what we’re looking for.’”

What, exactly, are Republicans looking for? “Victories,” Macias said. It was a victory, for example, when Trump not only condemned critical race theory rhetorically but also took action to ban racial-sensitivity trainings across the federal government. It was a victory when he campaigned on a border wall and, when his own party refused to fund it in Congress, declared a national emergency in order to get the money from the defense budget. And it was a victory when, in the midst of Trump’s claims of voter fraud, “you saw a bunch of Republican attorneys general actually take action,” Macias said.

After the election, as it became clear that Trump had no intention of conceding the race, a group of Trump allies, including Kris Kobach, who had helped lead Trump’s voter-fraud commission (which folded after not finding any voter fraud), started shopping around a lawsuit to take the election result directly to the Supreme Court. They had already written a complaint, which made the argument that some state legislatures had violated their own constitutions in changing their election rules and should thus have their popular votes discounted. They just needed an attorney general of some state, any state, to put their name to it. After unsuccessfully pitching attorneys general including Jeff Landry of Louisiana, the group approached Ken Paxton of Texas.

An outside observer might have wondered why they didn’t try him first. No attorney general in the country had hitched his or her wagon more totally to Trump or benefited more splendidly from doing so. Paxton previously served a dozen years in the state House and Senate, where he was known mainly as an advocate of anti-abortion legislation and for having tried and failed to dethrone Joe Straus. That changed in 2015, when, just seven months after succeeding Abbott as attorney general, Paxton was indicted on charges of securities fraud. (He pleaded not guilty.) His fate seemed so preordained that colleagues wondered when rather than whether he’d resign.

 

But Paxton held on, and he managed to mute critics within his party by churning out more than two dozen lawsuits against the Obama administration. When Trump was elected, Paxton wasted no time becoming his chief advocate in Texas, filing vigorous defenses of early policies like the Muslim travel ban. Trump took notice. “You have an attorney general who doesn’t stop,” Trump marveled at a rally in Austin in 2018. “He’s tough. He’s smart.” He added, inexplicably: “He collects more money for this state, Ken Paxton. You’re doing a great job, Ken.”

In the fall of 2020, things took a turn for Paxton again. Seven of his top staff members approached state and federal law-enforcement agencies with claims that he had abused his office to help a wealthy donor. In a subsequent lawsuit, four of the whistle-blowers claimed Paxton directed his staff to investigate the donor’s enemies and tidy up some of his legal troubles. In exchange, they said, the donor — a real estate developer — helped remodel Paxton’s home and gave a job to a former state-senate staff member with whom Paxton was supposedly having an affair. The F.B.I. is reportedly investigating the claims.

Filing the election lawsuit, as he did in the midst of these troubles, had been a “hard decision,” Paxton stressed to me recently. “It was unprecedented, and so it is harder to make decisions when you don’t have any kind of history to look back at and you’ve just got to make the first decision.” But to all outward appearances, the invitation to carry the lawsuit to defend Trump’s honor, arriving when it did, was nothing short of a gift. Trump reportedly asked Senator Ted Cruz to argue it before the Supreme Court; Cruz agreed. The court refused to hear it, but it nevertheless made Paxton once more a hero in the eyes of many Republicans. On Jan. 6, he stood outside the White House with his wife, drawing cheers from the crowd of Trump supporters as he promised them, just a few hours before many of them overran the U.S. Capitol, never to “quit fighting.” (Paxton insisted to me he’d “never even thought about” the potential of a pardon in exchange for taking on the lawsuit.)

Based on his conversations with Republican voters, Paxton said, election integrity remains the party’s “most important” focus. And so he planned to investigate claims of fraud in Texas: “As long as we have evidence of fraud, and as long as the statute of limitations is out there, we’ll pursue whatever evidence we have.” The Houston Chronicle recently reported that Paxton’s office logged more than 22,000 hours working on voter-fraud cases in 2020 (twice as many as in 2018), resolving 16 prosecutions (half as many as in 2018), all of them involving false addresses and none of them resulting in prison time. Paxton told me he did not think this report, which was based on data from his own office, was accurate, but he also said he had not read it. He reiterated that these cases “take time to develop.” (Paxton’s office subsequently said the election-fraud unit “resolved prosecutions of 68 offenses against 18 defendants” in 2020, a majority of them having to do with the 2018 election.)

Trump, he went on, was “clearly still the leader of the party.” The lawsuit in the former president’s name has invigorated Paxton’s career to the extent that despite his legal woes, he enjoys arguably more currency than Abbott among grass-roots conservatives. In our interview, Paxton seemed careful to distance himself from the governor whose legacy he once tried to emulate. In his handling of the pandemic, Abbott, Paxton allowed, had “done his best under the circumstances.” But reopening the state was “a direction that, you know, I wish we’d done a little bit earlier.” I asked if he was going to support Abbott in next year’s Republican primary for governor. “The way this typically works in a primary, is it’s kind of everybody running their own race,” he said. “I don’t think he supports me; I don’t support him.”

Abbott knows better than anyone that this is not how it typically works; as governor, he has involved himself in Republican primaries down to the state House level in attempts to knock off legislators who’ve spurned him. And so it is telling that an official like Paxton won’t commit to support Abbott against even a hypothetical challenger. Indeed, the accumulating tumult of the virus, the election and the storm has resulted in some Texas Republicans deciding that the 2022 gubernatorial primary represents a critical juncture in the fight for the future of the party. Primary speculation has been so rampant that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, with whom Abbott has endured intermittent friction, recently felt compelled to take himself out of the running. At a recent dinner for the Texas Young Republicans, according to a Texas Tribune reporter, the lieutenant governor emphasized his “hope” that no one would primary Abbott, “because he’s done a hell of a job, and we need to re-elect him again.”

Sid Miller, however — Sid Miller would respectfully disagree.

On the morning of March 11, Sidney Carroll Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner, was riding a horse named Big Smokin Hawk at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Big Smokin Hawk, known outside the show ring as Mini Pearl, is a sorrel mare on whose left hindquarter the letters S, I and D are branded. It was Day 9 of the rodeo, which in normal times features a panoply of attractions and performances — in 2019, Cardi B, clad in a pink-and-blue-sequined cowgirl get-up, drew a record 75,000-plus people — but this year it was significantly downsized. As ever, Miller had trailered his horses the four and a half hours from his farm in Erath County to compete.

Miller is a 65-year-old lifelong rancher and Republican who served 12 years in the Texas House before running successfully in 2014 for ag commissioner, his campaign co-chaired by one Ted Nugent. Some highlights of his tenure since then include charges of using state funds to travel to a rodeo in Mississippi (for this, the Texas Ethics Commission fined him $500); overturning the ban on deep fryers and soda machines in public schools; posting an image on his Facebook page that endorsed nuking “the Muslim world” (his spokesman at the time blamed an unnamed staff member for the post but clarified that he would not be apologizing for it and in fact had found its message “thought provoking”); and sharing, as part of a 2018 Facebook post condemning ABC for canceling the sitcom “Roseanne,” a doctored photo of Whoopi Goldberg wearing a shirt that showed Donald Trump shooting himself in the head. (Spokesman: “We post hundreds of things a week. We put stuff out there. We’re like Fox News. We report, we let people decide.”)

Donald Trump, as it happened, quite liked Sid Miller. He first appeared to notice him when, while Miller was on a Trump-campaign advisory board in 2016, his account posted a tweet calling Hillary Clinton what was reported as the “C-word,” then quickly deleted and replaced it with a claim that the account had been hacked. (Via a spokesman, Miller later said his staff “inadvertently retweeted a tweet” but finally just apologized.) Shortly thereafter, at a rally in Tampa, while talking about his campaign’s strength in Texas, Trump name-checked Miller and his “big, beautiful white cowboy hat.” Later, Miller interviewed to be Trump’s first secretary of agriculture, though the position ultimately went to Sonny Perdue. So when activist types recently began floating Miller as a challenger to Abbott, the idea did not seem entirely ludicrous.

“You know,” he said, not five minutes into our interview, “if I was governor. ...” We were sitting in a room off the arena along with Miller’s wife of 40 years, Debra, Miller still wearing his spurs and cowboy hat. “I think the governor’s got some problems,” Miller went on. He had attended the protest in front of the governor’s mansion in October. In his view, the recent move to lift all pandemic-related restrictions was beside the point. “I mean, I haven’t seen anything lifted. I’m having to wear my damn mask here, you know, in Houston, everywhere else I go.” (When I asked if a private business should be able to require a mask if it so wanted, Debra looked at her husband and nodded. “They can, they can, yeah,” Miller said.)

I noted that even as a vocal subset of Republicans had become disenchanted with Abbott, he and Trump seemed to get along well (“my best guy, best governor,” as Trump once called him). But Miller demurred. “Abbott wasn’t his biggest fan,” he claimed. “I would say they tolerated each other. They weren’t — they weren’t enemies.”

Miller said he hadn’t yet made a final decision about running. He would say, however, that he has received a lot of encouragement from others to do so. “I’ve had five people stop me here, and this is not even a political event. Just pulled me off the side and said, we really appreciate what you’re doing, and we hope you run for governor, and hang in there. And so there’s something building out there. People aren’t happy — ” He turned to Debra, who had just nudged him quietly. “You go to several events. ...” she offered in a low tone. “Oh, yeah,” he said, turning back to me. “When I go to events, it’s overwhelming, the response we get at the Republican events.”

This is probably true, or at least true enough. Miller is not exaggerating when he says that on a good week he reaches millions of people on social media, more than Abbott, Patrick, John Cornyn and even Ted Cruz combined. He has mastered the art of Facebook engagement in no small part by promulgating conspiracy theories about the election. “Well,” he said, “I think there’s a lot of theories out there that aren’t conspiracies.”

Along with Allen West, Miller’s name comes up often when grass-roots conservatives muse about an alternative to Abbott. This could be on account of his social media, or his unending devotion to Trump, who recently hosted him for a private dinner at Mar-a-Lago to discuss topics including “possible future political plans,” according to Miller’s spokesman. But another reason is that there are now very, very rich Republican donors who want to take out Abbott, too, and they will need some candidate, perhaps even a candidate as cartoonish as Miller, to do it. Chief among them is Tim Dunn, a multimillionaire oil executive and evangelical Christian from Midland who for the past two decades has spent millions in order to move the Legislature further to the right. There’s the Wilks family out of Cisco, who made billions off the early-aughts fracking boom. Dunn and the Wilkses trend extremely libertarian in their politics, and they were especially angered by Abbott’s pandemic restrictions; Dunn, criticizing the “Austin Swamp,” lent Shelley Luther, the salon owner, $1 million for her failed State Senate bid.

Neither has yet indicated whom they would back, if anyone, in the primary. But at least one donor has taken a shine to Sid Miller of late: Steve Hotze. Though he was still dealing with the fallout of his election-fraud-investigation debacle — Aguirre, the former police captain, has since been charged with assault with a deadly weapon (plea: not guilty), and Hotze has since been sued by Lopez, the air-conditioner repairman — it had not stopped him from turning to his next target. In recent weeks, Hotze teamed up with Miller to sue Dan Patrick for requiring Covid-19 tests in the Texas Senate, over which Patrick presides; in response, Patrick’s spokesman said he agreed with the Republican-led senate’s unanimous decision to require the tests. (A hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for early May.)

“I think the future of the G.O.P. in Texas is very bright,” Miller told me.

What matters is not so much whether Abbott can defeat a Republican like Sid Miller but whether, when he does, he will feel compelled to govern like one anyway. “If what you’re confronting is a party made up of a shrinking base of ever more — not ‘conservative,’ not just ‘right-wing,’ but people who believe in conspiracies, it gets really hard to govern,” Bob Stein, a political-science professor at Rice University, told me. Over the past two decades, the party’s vote share for president in Texas has declined by more than seven points, a trend accelerated by the state’s growing Asian and Hispanic populations — groups that have voted less Republican as hostility to even legal immigration has spread in the party — as well as the conversion of suburban Republicans to Democrats during the Trump era. “It gets hard to make important decisions about education and health and welfare.”

He reminded me of an exchange during one of the first Texas Senate committee hearings on the winter storm on Feb. 25. John Whitmire, the Houston Democrat, was questioning a meteorologist about whether Texans could expect more such storms in the future as a result of climate change. The committee’s Republican chairman, Kelly Hancock, jumped in before the witness could respond. “Ah, Senator Whitmire, what we’d like to do in the committee is stick with the events of last week rather than getting — that’s, that’s a significant discussion, but —” Whitmire tried to interject, but Hancock went on: “This is, this is a discussion where we can chase a lot of rabbits. ...”

“The game is really pretty simple: Just play for a majority of a small group, and the rest doesn’t matter,” Joe Straus told me. “But it will someday.”

The day after my interview with Allen West, about a hundred people gathered for a Republican Party “legislative priorities” rally, which West was attending, at a church in Webster, a small city just outside of Houston. The most discussed issue, by far, was “election integrity.” Melissa Conway, a Republican activist, whose red stilettos were fashioned to look like cowboy boots, delivered the first presentation. “We’re living in a country where the noise and the chaos is so. Incredibly. Loud,” Conway said. She then lowered her voice to a whisper: “The silence of the perfect storm is yet to be heard.” (The Texas G.O.P. has talked often of “the storm” in recent months, in what many have interpreted as a nod to the QAnon conspiracy theory, which invests great meaning in an offhand Trump comment from 2017 about “the calm before the storm.” West told me the slogan the party adopted over the summer, “We Are the Storm,” is a reference to “a simple poem,” not QAnon, though which poem is unclear.)

“You and I can walk the streets, and we can get fine men and women elected who represent our voice, who we vote for, but yet in the darkness and the quiet, if the right laws don’t exist and if the right structure is not in place — slowly, it can be stolen,” Conway went on. “Luckily, and again by God’s grace, the election — we held Texas,” she said. “But for how long?”

West returned to this theme again as the rally’s final speaker. Multiple people, some with their children, had already approached him to ask for selfies. On the stage, he held aloft his pocket copy of the Constitution and said it was time to “cowboy the hell up.” “It’s time to put on the full armor of God,” he went on, referencing Ephesians 6, “and go out there on this battlefield and save this incredible state, and this incredible nation.” He entreated the audience to prepare for their upcoming municipal elections. “If you control those elected positions, then you control the machinery, you control the process, you control everything else.” This, he said, was what he wanted Republicans to focus on — to stop chasing “rumors” and “conspiracy theories.” He tried to soften his admonishment with a joke. “If another person sends me a text message about some Italian dude and messing around with votes” — a reference to an obscure conspiracy theory involving an Italian defense contractor — “I’m going to go apoplectic on them.”

West, who for months had happily fanned the flames of election fraud, was suddenly trying to rein it in, as if appending a disclaimer to much of his speech. Several people in the audience laughed. What was remarkable was how many more did not. As West moved on, I watched as multiple people glanced disconcertedly at their neighbors. Some muttered under their breath. During the Q. and A. session, one woman appeared to give voice to many when, as West was arguing that they as voters “have the power to stop corruption,” she shouted back, “We had the election stolen!”

At the end of the rally, dozens of people formed a line to take pictures with West. Several vented their frustrations over Trump’s loss. A blond woman, who wore a red shirt that read “Liberalism: Find a Cure” and carried a “TEXIT NOW” sign — West had recently been arguing for the state’s secession — turned back to West after posing for a photo. “I know you talked about ignoring the conspiracy theories, but I don’t understand,” she said. “Are we just supposed to let them get away with it?”

I couldn’t make out West’s response, but as the woman walked away, a man who evidently heard the exchange approached her. “I’m with you,” he said. “They stole the election.”

“But we don’t go after them!” she responded. The man, who had silvering hair and wore a black Ariat quarter-zip and jeans, nodded and lowered his voice slightly. “I’m ready to start stacking bodies,” he said. “No, I’m serious. All I need is a target.” He then used his thumb and index finger to imitate the shape of a gun. “Zap, zap, zap,” he said.

I ran to catch up with the man as he headed to the parking lot. “We had an election stolen, and we’re just done,” he told me. He clarified that while he hoped for a “peaceful” future for the country, he was “absolutely” prepared to fight for Texas to secede. “At the end of the day, if it’s communism or freedom, it’s going to be ugly.”

The Republican Party — in Texas, in America — was “over” and “done,” he said. The Communists had taken control of system, and they had already picked their winners. And so he had made up his mind, he said: He would never vote in a federal election again.

 

[Js1 85834]

Hotze is full on grifter.  The psychotic GOP voter fraud/killing protester things is just an offshoot of a guy afraid to lose his client base. 

[TexasEd 8156]

11 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

He released a statement today. This guy needs committed.


I am truly sorry that this has caused confusion and pain, especially in my native hometown. But this is not about me. It never has been. If it were up to me, I’d be sitting on a beach in Australia or exploring the jungles in Africa. Maybe the beach in San Diego, or Portland or Madison remain on my bucket list of places to travel. Of course, I’m pretty blue collar, so Melvern Lake or a Royals game is more my style.
But my FAMILY has been in Kansas by choice and pro-life (iron-ic, huh?) since 1869. I’m not quite that old, but they must have some pretty good character and roots, because they voluntarily left amazing places like Indiana and Pennsylvania to come here, Kansas, a FREE STATE.
Some of us attend church on Sunday, some of us don’t. But WE are all God-fearing people. In fact, my family voluntarily donated land to establish a beautiful church here in the outskirts of nowhere/somewhere the world will never stop to visit. We prefer it that way, because we are busy farming, teaching, hunting, and attending or watching as many sporting events as possible, from youth to high school to college to professional sports on the world stage (c’mon World Cup, KC would love to host you with our unbeatable Midwestern hospitality).
What happened in Wellsville on Wednesday? Only God knows.
I have my version. You have yours. The kids, as we discussed in each hour BEFORE 5th hour and then also at the beginning of 5th hour before anything “newsworthy” occurred, each as theirs.
So how do we find the Truth? It’s probably not be listening to the yellers and the screamers, is it? Yet look how quickly they get headline news today. They come after everyone. Our educators, our law enforcement, our doctors and frontline workers, our judges and court personnel. They attack Christianity while calling for God to be removed from the classroom and cancelled or erased from American history and modern society.
It’s not going to work folks. Do you like how our world looks right now? Do you like the skyrocketing divorce rates and teenage suicide rates? Of course we don’t. But how many of us pause to CHANGE our own actions? Any of you attended a #ZeroReasonsWhy meeting lately? You should. That group is amazing, and it’s turning the tide on mental health.
Any of you volunteered to substitute teach #ForTheKids? It’s a financial sacrifice. Or ref middle school or high school sports to #CallItBothWays? Let me tell you, the pay is great. And if you think MY behavior in the classroom on Wednesday was inappropriate or even criminal, how about we compare it to YOUR behavior at any given PUBLIC SCHOOL (or private or home school) sporting event? Look how the world treats our children and our referees in those settings? I know, because I’ve reffed countless of them. And we are at wit’s end. I literally had a grandma on the front row holding a baby in Gardner, Kansas last week (AAU tournament, shocking they couldn’t find any refs who wanted to show up) calling me every 4-letter word in the book, and then some, because she was acting out of anger, hostility, and resentment. In those scenarios, we referees are frequently in fear for our safety. Yet THAT is American society that has become “normal.” And the helpers and good guys keep showing up so the kids can play. Why? God only knows. I would suggest it’s because we love the kids and we love the game so much that we tolerate more abuse than the average American and dare I say keyboard warrior or yeller or screamer or chicken can fathom. THE KIDS NEED US. Like Coach Martin said, the kids haven’t changed. But boy has our society and parenting. And it’s not good for our young people, folks.
On Sundays, I attend church. I know where I am going. A church that actually makes sense and uses the Lord’s Word in a positive manner. I am aware that not all churches necessarily operate that way. I can’t change the world. And only Jesus can save. I am fine. I am saved. I am doing my absolute best to bring national attention to teenage mental health and prevention of suicide.
Folks, I get messages from our young people about every day, maybe every-other-day, dealing with things I couldn’t even imagine when I was a student at Wellsville myself. Anxiety, depression, hallucinations, suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, etc. In our small towns, ONE suicide deeply hurts our entire community. NO MORE FOLKS. Step up. Do something. Check on our neighbors. Get off our phones and social media. God’s country and His people are still incredible. He didn’t create skin colors. Humans screwed that up. He didn’t create hate. Yet look at what we do via social media every single day.
As President Lincoln, our beautiful Nation — founded on God while fully respecting and protecting freedom of religion — will NEVER be brought down from the outside. Conservative or liberal, black or white, gay or straight, it makes no difference, folks. In moments of need, AMERICANS rally together to heed the call. Out of many, ONE. Yet as so many prior American leaders have warned, here we are on the brink of destroying ourselves from within. How many more wake-up signs do we need? Riots at the Capitol? Mass shootings? Pure evil and hatred?
Dear God, enough is enough. I pray the NEW NORMAL is one based on love. And compassion. And patience. And yes, fearing God Almighty and doing our best to understand and follow His word. The Bible. The 10 Commandments. I pray that Kansas and America returns to a NEW NORMAL where the laws WE mere mortals write are consistent with the teachings of Jesus. And that we all do our best to respect one another. We follow and obey the manmade laws that sit well with our own morals and religious beliefs, and when not, we firmly yet gracefully protest publicly — quietly at first, then loudly if necessary — in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Justin Bieber figured it out. And Katy Perry. And Blake Shelton. And Patrick Mahomes. And what politician…..it’s hard to find one isn’t it, and yet we keep voting for these folks who do the same things over and over like SHEEP. For their special interests, political parties, and wealthy donors. Do we really wonder why America is hurting so badly right now? I don’t. It’s not rocket science. I would suggest Liz Cheney has it figured out. And yet look how she gets crucified. God bless her, her family, and all of Wyoming for sending her to Washington, DC to clean up a mess of perhaps unparalleled proportions. And yet how many of us have already moved on from the attack by the so-called “Patriots” on OUR Nation’s Capitol? I cried that day. I pray to God every day that we UNITE as a country to fix it. Yet I don’t see it. No, sadly, it looks like more business and life “as usual.”
Was Wednesday unorthodox? Absolutely. Did I intend to hurt a soul or act for a single moment out of rage, animosity, or any other element of battery? Absolutely not. I honest to God love all His children. That’s what Jesus teaches. I’m not trying to sound preachy. But how else do you tell the truth and speak about the Bible? I don’t know. I’m doing my best folks, and I am genuinely sorry for any pain or confusion this may cause anyone. But I will put my hand on the Bible right now and swear that I didn’t do anything wrong. Those kids are the LAST people on the planet I would ever do anything to intentionally hurt. I’ve known most of them for years, some for over a decade.
Now let’s compare that to YOUR actions. I know several kids who care about me deeply and because of the nasty and false/misleading things written by the KC Star and others here on social media, THEY are hurting. That’s not caused by me folks. Nope, that’s you, keyboard warriors. I actually show up at their events. Or at least I used to. And I will again after this storm passes, because their parents and they want me there. They invite me there. Not all of them. But many, or most. I can’t do anything about the haters. Nope, that’s beyond me. But I do listen to T-Swift. I shake it off. Always will. God has me exactly where He NEEDS me. And that scares folks and confuses ’em. Some of them anyway.
The truth will continue to unfold over the coming days. Remember that patience is a virtue. Notwithstanding the efforts of some to convict immediately — some for caring but misguided motives, others for ill motives — here in American we are innocent until proven guilty. For all those worried about me and my mental condition, please put your fears to rest. I am good. Better than ok, but not great. It seems that’s about the best we can do in this world for anything more than a short period. For all the haters attacking me relentlessly, please stop. Your words are immaterial to me. You don’t know me. You don’t care to. That’s fine. But your words are hurting the young people who are watching and paying attention. I deeply regret that my actions may have caused confusion or sadness among a handful of some young folks. But I only had ONE RULE. They know what is was, and it was simple. If they broke the rule, I told them the truth. Some of them did lie. Deceive. Etc. But not the vast majority. And many of them that appeared to, knew exactly what they were doing to serve a higher purpose. MENTAL HEALTH FOR OUR YOUNG PEOPLE, and even our not-so-young. I said that every single hour, 1st-5th. I am beyond tired of attending funerals of our kids. I will scream that from about anywhere. If that upsets you, we probably don’t have much to discuss, so perhaps your keyboard is the best place for you. But I would honestly suggest that here a lot more important uses of our time, both yours and mine.
Please keep all the prayers coming for healing, for Teddy, for mental health reform, for criminal justice reform, for the right balance of God to be allowed in our public places and schools. Because it’s not there right now folks. The proof is in the pudding.
I’m off to church. Take care everyone. Let’s Go Royals! clap, clap, clap clap clap.







Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

Cliff Notes:

 

[Guest Lobo]

"because they voluntarily left amazing places like Indiana and Pennsylvania to come here, Kansas, a FREE STATE."

I quit reading after that.  Not even Mike Pence or Larry Bird has ever called Indiana "Amazing Place"  And I don't know if this "teacher" knows much about the Civil War, but Pennsylvania was also a "Free State."  There was kind of a huge battle about it in Southern Pennsylvania, some famous President gave a speech about it or something.  
 

Whatever this guy's political aspirations were about State Rep., he should seriously rethink them.  Because he has the kind of insanity, narcissism, complete lack of situational awareness, and with no working knowledge of history---that guy could be Kansas Lt. Gov. by next election. 

[TwiceHorn 31701]

12 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

Sick bastard.

*bitch.

The assaulting officer is a woman.

[Willfully Horn 8098]

9 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

*bitch.

The assaulting officer is a woman.

Thanks. You’ve a stronger stomach than I.

[High Plains Drifter 11064]

On 5/2/2021 at 10:18 AM, Hefeweizen said:

Well Eanes managed to turn back the two Trump cultists trying to turn the school board into culture war central.  It was way closer than comfortable with each of the jackasses getting 45 percent of the vote.  I am ready to get on the ledge if we can’t get that number down to about 20 percent.  No way there are that many burn it down people out there, we just can’t get most people to vote.

 

trumpist cop won in my school board district beat the very reasonable low profile moderate incumbent, who was a friend of my wife. Winner said he has one issue-- arming teachers.

 

 

 

[Neonmoon 38130]

5 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

trumpist cop won in my school board district beat the very reasonable low profile moderate incumbent, who was a friend of my wife. Winner said he has one issue-- arming teachers.

 

 

 

 I will start the countdown to when a teacher murders a brat kid

[High Plains Drifter 11064]

19 hours ago, Hefeweizen said:

Not knowing the pledge to Own the Libs!

 

The trump flags on fences gradually fraying and falling apart is the chef’s kiss to see when you drive by in the county.

 

Couple of days ago someone had spray painted "Loser" and "Traitor" on a dotard sign hanging on a fence along a rural highway in my county. Half mile down the road, a smaller sign had "LOL" spray painted on it.

I should have gotten a pic. I'll get one next time I pass by, if they are still up.

 

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13562]

12 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

He released a statement today. This guy needs committed.


I am truly sorry that this has caused confusion and pain, especially in my native hometown. But this is not about me. It never has been. If it were up to me, I’d be sitting on a beach in Australia or exploring the jungles in Africa. Maybe the beach in San Diego, or Portland or Madison remain on my bucket list of places to travel. Of course, I’m pretty blue collar, so Melvern Lake or a Royals game is more my style.
But my FAMILY has been in Kansas by choice and pro-life (iron-ic, huh?) since 1869. I’m not quite that old, but they must have some pretty good character and roots, because they voluntarily left amazing places like Indiana and Pennsylvania to come here, Kansas, a FREE STATE.
Some of us attend church on Sunday, some of us don’t. But WE are all God-fearing people. In fact, my family voluntarily donated land to establish a beautiful church here in the outskirts of nowhere/somewhere the world will never stop to visit. We prefer it that way, because we are busy farming, teaching, hunting, and attending or watching as many sporting events as possible, from youth to high school to college to professional sports on the world stage (c’mon World Cup, KC would love to host you with our unbeatable Midwestern hospitality).
What happened in Wellsville on Wednesday? Only God knows.
I have my version. You have yours. The kids, as we discussed in each hour BEFORE 5th hour and then also at the beginning of 5th hour before anything “newsworthy” occurred, each as theirs.
So how do we find the Truth? It’s probably not be listening to the yellers and the screamers, is it? Yet look how quickly they get headline news today. They come after everyone. Our educators, our law enforcement, our doctors and frontline workers, our judges and court personnel. They attack Christianity while calling for God to be removed from the classroom and cancelled or erased from American history and modern society.
It’s not going to work folks. Do you like how our world looks right now? Do you like the skyrocketing divorce rates and teenage suicide rates? Of course we don’t. But how many of us pause to CHANGE our own actions? Any of you attended a #ZeroReasonsWhy meeting lately? You should. That group is amazing, and it’s turning the tide on mental health.
Any of you volunteered to substitute teach #ForTheKids? It’s a financial sacrifice. Or ref middle school or high school sports to #CallItBothWays? Let me tell you, the pay is great. And if you think MY behavior in the classroom on Wednesday was inappropriate or even criminal, how about we compare it to YOUR behavior at any given PUBLIC SCHOOL (or private or home school) sporting event? Look how the world treats our children and our referees in those settings? I know, because I’ve reffed countless of them. And we are at wit’s end. I literally had a grandma on the front row holding a baby in Gardner, Kansas last week (AAU tournament, shocking they couldn’t find any refs who wanted to show up) calling me every 4-letter word in the book, and then some, because she was acting out of anger, hostility, and resentment. In those scenarios, we referees are frequently in fear for our safety. Yet THAT is American society that has become “normal.” And the helpers and good guys keep showing up so the kids can play. Why? God only knows. I would suggest it’s because we love the kids and we love the game so much that we tolerate more abuse than the average American and dare I say keyboard warrior or yeller or screamer or chicken can fathom. THE KIDS NEED US. Like Coach Martin said, the kids haven’t changed. But boy has our society and parenting. And it’s not good for our young people, folks.
On Sundays, I attend church. I know where I am going. A church that actually makes sense and uses the Lord’s Word in a positive manner. I am aware that not all churches necessarily operate that way. I can’t change the world. And only Jesus can save. I am fine. I am saved. I am doing my absolute best to bring national attention to teenage mental health and prevention of suicide.
Folks, I get messages from our young people about every day, maybe every-other-day, dealing with things I couldn’t even imagine when I was a student at Wellsville myself. Anxiety, depression, hallucinations, suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, etc. In our small towns, ONE suicide deeply hurts our entire community. NO MORE FOLKS. Step up. Do something. Check on our neighbors. Get off our phones and social media. God’s country and His people are still incredible. He didn’t create skin colors. Humans screwed that up. He didn’t create hate. Yet look at what we do via social media every single day.
As President Lincoln, our beautiful Nation — founded on God while fully respecting and protecting freedom of religion — will NEVER be brought down from the outside. Conservative or liberal, black or white, gay or straight, it makes no difference, folks. In moments of need, AMERICANS rally together to heed the call. Out of many, ONE. Yet as so many prior American leaders have warned, here we are on the brink of destroying ourselves from within. How many more wake-up signs do we need? Riots at the Capitol? Mass shootings? Pure evil and hatred?
Dear God, enough is enough. I pray the NEW NORMAL is one based on love. And compassion. And patience. And yes, fearing God Almighty and doing our best to understand and follow His word. The Bible. The 10 Commandments. I pray that Kansas and America returns to a NEW NORMAL where the laws WE mere mortals write are consistent with the teachings of Jesus. And that we all do our best to respect one another. We follow and obey the manmade laws that sit well with our own morals and religious beliefs, and when not, we firmly yet gracefully protest publicly — quietly at first, then loudly if necessary — in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Justin Bieber figured it out. And Katy Perry. And Blake Shelton. And Patrick Mahomes. And what politician…..it’s hard to find one isn’t it, and yet we keep voting for these folks who do the same things over and over like SHEEP. For their special interests, political parties, and wealthy donors. Do we really wonder why America is hurting so badly right now? I don’t. It’s not rocket science. I would suggest Liz Cheney has it figured out. And yet look how she gets crucified. God bless her, her family, and all of Wyoming for sending her to Washington, DC to clean up a mess of perhaps unparalleled proportions. And yet how many of us have already moved on from the attack by the so-called “Patriots” on OUR Nation’s Capitol? I cried that day. I pray to God every day that we UNITE as a country to fix it. Yet I don’t see it. No, sadly, it looks like more business and life “as usual.”
Was Wednesday unorthodox? Absolutely. Did I intend to hurt a soul or act for a single moment out of rage, animosity, or any other element of battery? Absolutely not. I honest to God love all His children. That’s what Jesus teaches. I’m not trying to sound preachy. But how else do you tell the truth and speak about the Bible? I don’t know. I’m doing my best folks, and I am genuinely sorry for any pain or confusion this may cause anyone. But I will put my hand on the Bible right now and swear that I didn’t do anything wrong. Those kids are the LAST people on the planet I would ever do anything to intentionally hurt. I’ve known most of them for years, some for over a decade.
Now let’s compare that to YOUR actions. I know several kids who care about me deeply and because of the nasty and false/misleading things written by the KC Star and others here on social media, THEY are hurting. That’s not caused by me folks. Nope, that’s you, keyboard warriors. I actually show up at their events. Or at least I used to. And I will again after this storm passes, because their parents and they want me there. They invite me there. Not all of them. But many, or most. I can’t do anything about the haters. Nope, that’s beyond me. But I do listen to T-Swift. I shake it off. Always will. God has me exactly where He NEEDS me. And that scares folks and confuses ’em. Some of them anyway.
The truth will continue to unfold over the coming days. Remember that patience is a virtue. Notwithstanding the efforts of some to convict immediately — some for caring but misguided motives, others for ill motives — here in American we are innocent until proven guilty. For all those worried about me and my mental condition, please put your fears to rest. I am good. Better than ok, but not great. It seems that’s about the best we can do in this world for anything more than a short period. For all the haters attacking me relentlessly, please stop. Your words are immaterial to me. You don’t know me. You don’t care to. That’s fine. But your words are hurting the young people who are watching and paying attention. I deeply regret that my actions may have caused confusion or sadness among a handful of some young folks. But I only had ONE RULE. They know what is was, and it was simple. If they broke the rule, I told them the truth. Some of them did lie. Deceive. Etc. But not the vast majority. And many of them that appeared to, knew exactly what they were doing to serve a higher purpose. MENTAL HEALTH FOR OUR YOUNG PEOPLE, and even our not-so-young. I said that every single hour, 1st-5th. I am beyond tired of attending funerals of our kids. I will scream that from about anywhere. If that upsets you, we probably don’t have much to discuss, so perhaps your keyboard is the best place for you. But I would honestly suggest that here a lot more important uses of our time, both yours and mine.
Please keep all the prayers coming for healing, for Teddy, for mental health reform, for criminal justice reform, for the right balance of God to be allowed in our public places and schools. Because it’s not there right now folks. The proof is in the pudding.
I’m off to church. Take care everyone. Let’s Go Royals! clap, clap, clap clap clap.







Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

My memory of school is that there isn't anything much worse than a substitute teacher that is trying to make a difference. You're collecting a small paycheck to just babysit students for an hour at a time all day. That is all anyone wants from you. You're not going to gain the trust of the students in a 50-55 minute class.

[Fudge Nuggets 19287]

2 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

You're not going to gain the trust of the students in a 50-55 minute class.

Especially if your go to move is kicking them in the balls.

[Jack Straw 2954]

5 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

Gym will not face one single negative consequence over this.  Not one goddamned thing, and you all know it.   Hell, I bet he manages to double the contributions to his campaign bitching about how much he's being persecuted by the libs.

completely agree.  way more Republicans need to suffer consequences.  
 

and by suffer consequences, I mean have their lives entirely ruined. 
 

and by way more, I mean all.  

[wildcat09 29453]

5 minutes ago, Jack Straw said:

completely agree.  way more Republicans need to suffer consequences.  
 

and by suffer consequences, I mean have their lives entirely ruined. 
 

and by way more, I mean all.  

We should encourage Rand Paul's neighbor to move in next door to Gym Jordan.

Edited May 4, 2021 by wildcat09

[TwiceHorn 31701]

So Paxton won't support Abbott in his 22 reelection campaign.  https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/04/texas-ken-paxton-greg-abbott/

Or maybe he does.  

Also:

Quote

Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and Texas GOP Chairman Allen West have not ruled out challenging Abbott. Miller has also raised speculation that he could run against Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. And Land Commissioner George P. Bush is looking at a bid against Paxton.

I really am going to have to move, aren't I?

[Pancho 45536]

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33963]

5 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

So Paxton won't support Abbott in his 22 reelection campaign.  https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/04/texas-ken-paxton-greg-abbott/

Or maybe he does.  

Also:

I really am going to have to move, aren't I?

what if, and hear me out, they all lose?

[Longhorn_Fan68 33963]

Just now, Pancho said:

 

[Brisketexan 105645]

10 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

So Paxton won't support Abbott in his 22 reelection campaign.  https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/04/texas-ken-paxton-greg-abbott/

Or maybe he does.  

Also:

I really am going to have to move, aren't I?

Oh....sit back, and wait.  Wait until Fitlump announces her candidacy for higher state office.....and wins in an easy walk-off.

The battle in Texas right now is to see how stupid the GQP can actually get and still win elections handily.  The answer is known: a LOT more stupid.  More stupid than you can imagine.  They will take "stupid" places nobody knew it could go, plant the flag of victory, and dance around it.

[Cousin Strawberry 1263]

On 5/2/2021 at 10:18 AM, Hefeweizen said:

Well Eanes managed to turn back the two Trump cultists trying to turn the school board into culture war central.  It was way closer than comfortable with each of the jackasses getting 45 percent of the vote.  I am ready to get on the ledge if we can’t get that number down to about 20 percent.  No way there are that many burn it down people out there, we just can’t get most people to vote.

Loon: "but, but, but critical race theory!!!!!"

Sane Person: "It's not being taught in our schools, nor is it part of any curriculum."

Loon: "It's anti-christian and racist!!!"

Sane Person: "It's not being taught in our schools, nor is it part of any curriculum."

I actually saw a crazy on nextdoor claiming that if more Eanes kids choose to go to private schools then Eanes will allow more transfers. Basically, saying  that kids that can't afford to live in Eanes will mix with Eanes kids.  The horror.

[Slacks 6921]

3 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

 I will start the countdown to when a teacher murders a brat kid

brat kid? snacks kid?

[Pescado_Rojo 19454]

4 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

 I will start the countdown to when a teacher murders a brat kid

Or shoots him/herself either on purpose or accidentally. 

[atomheartbevo 90119]

4 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

 I will start the countdown to when a teacher murders a brat kid

Armybrat doesn't have any kids in school.

Great-grandkids, or great-great-grandkids, but his kids finished school and went on to become a part of the Greatest Generation.

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2124]

49 minutes ago, Pancho said:

 

respek to Madison's long game.  

[Pato del Muerto 52911]

5 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

For reasons that remain unclear

Book title for this whole big lie mess. 

[Hefeweizen 5361]

41 minutes ago, Cousin Strawberry said:

Loon: "but, but, but critical race theory!!!!!"

Sane Person: "It's not being taught in our schools, nor is it part of any curriculum."

Loon: "It's anti-christian and racist!!!"

Sane Person: "It's not being taught in our schools, nor is it part of any curriculum."

I actually saw a crazy on nextdoor claiming that if more Eanes kids choose to go to private schools then Eanes will allow more transfers. Basically, saying  that kids that can't afford to live in Eanes will mix with Eanes kids.  The horror.

Yeah there is a serious under current of the browns are coming to get us to all of this.  None of that CRT crap is even on the table. It’s crazy how divided everything is and a big part, maybe the biggest, is social media.  Charlie Strong was a visionary when he said it was the downfall of society....

[dingleberryswitzer 2724]

15 hours ago, NameAlreadyInUse said:

I admit to zoning out for part of that. Where was the part where he explained his actions beyond “I have my story, and you have yours?”

I didn’t read it all either but what I got out of it was “everyone else is a shitbag and i live in a shithole state filled with shitbag people.  My family has been shitbags here for a century.  Therefore I have the right to also be a shitbag to my fellow shitbags’ kids.  “  Also something something church and sports. 

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

The craziest part, to me at least, of all this white supremacist nonsense (both the overt kind, and the GQP variety that at least pretends to be about political structure, even if it's really just paranoid ranting) is that if you were to take their fears at face value, and just assume that whites are being replaced, and WASP culture is in imminent danger...

So? Putting WASPs in charge of trying to resuscitate WASP culture isn't gonna work anyway. Maybe prolong the death throes for a few more years, but face it, man, the WASP economy can't support the WASP welfare that the GQP is hoping for. Assimilate with brown folk, or die. Those are the choices. And if you choose "die" then you're just as stupid as you are evil.

Now if you'll excuse me, my Los Lobos CD is skipping a groove because it's got a scratch on it from the clutching fingers of a right winger trying to get me to turn off that brown noise...

[Willfully Horn 8098]

4 minutes ago, Walden Ponderer said:

Assimilate with brown folk, or die.

The script was made clear in the beginning. Past time we celebrate our roles.

Edited May 4, 2021 by Willfully Horn
Plurality

[Brisketexan 105645]

13 minutes ago, Hefeweizen said:

Yeah there is a serious under current of the browns are coming to get us to all of this.  None of that CRT crap is even on the table. It’s crazy how divided everything is and a big part, maybe the biggest, is social media.  Charlie Strong was a visionary when he said it was the downfall of society....

He definitely had his finger on America's pulse....

[Ghost of LL 15605]

On 5/2/2021 at 10:18 AM, Hefeweizen said:

Well Eanes managed to turn back the two Trump cultists trying to turn the school board into culture war central.  It was way closer than comfortable with each of the jackasses getting 45 percent of the vote.  I am ready to get on the ledge if we can’t get that number down to about 20 percent.  No way there are that many burn it down people out there, we just can’t get most people to vote.

Imma gonna tap the brakes on this a bit.  Pre-Trump, Eanes was a Republican bastion in Travis County.  I'm too lazy to go back and look at the exact voting history of all those precincts, but I will tell you that my precinct has moved decidedly to the Democrats.  In 2012, my precinct went for Romney 53-44.  In 2020, it went 63-36 for Biden.

My point is this: I don't think we should be surprised that there are GQPers running for office in Eanes.  The surprise really is that they don't win.  Hell--that was a 10-point loss; the GQPers aren't even particularly competitive.

I think the most noteworthy point of this election in Eanes was the turnout.  In 2020, 24,000 people voted in Eanes in a presidential election.  In this election, more than 10,000 voted for school board.  That's a pretty small fucking drop-off in turnout from a presidential year (with historically high turnout) to a May election in an off-off year.  And given that the non-GQP candidates won pretty comfortably, I think it is a pretty good sign that Democrats remain engaged and eager to turn out in elections.

On 5/2/2021 at 11:15 AM, Lobo said:

I actually think the 10-point spread in both races (more or less) was somewhat comforting.  Considering the two losing candidates outspent their opponents 3:1.  

"We'll be damned if our school district is gonna be run from Washington, D.C. elites some 1500 miles away.  Now then, let's check in with nearby Mar-a-Lago to chat with people who are truly connected to the public K-12 experience and see what they think about education."  

If they weren't so damn obvious about their cocksucking of Trump, they both could have won on their "bloated budgets/not enough emphasis on fundamental coursework/lack of oversight and transparency" platforms.  Hopefully this is a micro-example of being a fucking asshole who worships Trump, still...is not in the interest of parents these days.  It may work for a run at U.S. Congress, but it falls on deaf ears when it comes to elite school districts.  

I'm pretty sure the spending difference was more than 3:1.  Last I saw, Jen Stevens had spent in the neighborhood of $150K on her campaign.  For a lousy school board seat.  That's absurd.

And the really weird thing is where some of that money was coming from.  A couple who is renting a place in West Lake Hills and send their kids to Trinity dropped $30K on her campaign.  Why?  I'm not sure.  It's a weird story that is so convoluted that I don't even feel comfortable trying to retell it.  Let it suffice to say that shit's fucking weird.

[Guest Lobo]

^

Yeah, this mystery "new-to-town" guy gives her $25k after they had coffee, and she listened to him talk about private schools.  And for a well versed PR person, the way she portrayed the whole thing to the media was so fucking weird.  Yeah, spending was probably more like 5 or 6:1.  And the videos of lies and misinformation was truly disturbing.  Gave me some hope that the Trump playbook works on a smaller chunk of the population.  

[elfenix 34388]

did ALEC send out a text message to all these nutbag GQPers about the 3/5 compromise today?

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2124]

36 minutes ago, Hefeweizen said:

Charlie Strong was a visionary

 

[Beau Vine 54952]

 

[washparkhorn 9939]

On 5/2/2021 at 4:35 PM, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

 

I have a feeling Flynn may have felt goosebumps for the wrong anthem in this match:

 

[Ghost of LL 15605]

7 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

I have a feeling Flynn may have felt goosebumps for the wrong anthem in this match:

 

Well, I mean, yeah--probably.

But in fairness, theirs is a better anthem.

[Js1 85834]

9 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

 

Hm, i wonder where she heard that?!?!?!? 

 

 

[wildcat09 29453]

The Texas GOP is about to vote to allow any anti-abortion psycho to sue basically any Democrat.

 

This language is so broad it arguably authorizes lawsuits against people for saying anything positive about abortion at all, and prevents defendants who are frivolously sued from recovering attorney's fees and court costs.

[Beau Vine 54952]

3 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

The Texas GOP is about to vote to allow any anti-abortion psycho to sue basically any Democrat.

 

This language is so broad it arguably authorizes lawsuits against people for saying anything positive about abortion at all, and prevents defendants who are frivolously sued from recovering attorney's fees and court costs.

Does having a batshit crazy law like that get around the legal standards of having to have standing and being able to show damages?

[Ghost of LL 15605]

38 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Does having a batshit crazy law like that get around the legal standards of having to have standing and being able to show damages?

In state court, there is a concept of "statutory standing," which allows a person who wouldn't otherwise have constitutional standing to sue.

[Brisketexan 105645]

50 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

The Texas GOP is about to vote to allow any anti-abortion psycho to sue basically any Democrat.

 

This language is so broad it arguably authorizes lawsuits against people for saying anything positive about abortion at all, and prevents defendants who are frivolously sued from recovering attorney's fees and court costs.

Sounds to me like we can get together and sue anyone anywhere for engaging in the primary conduct that "aids or abets in the performance of an abortion" -- literally the "but for" action, without which there would be no abortion.  That's right, I'm talking about suing everyone in the State of Texas who continues to fuck after the passage of this bill.  No more fucking, people.  It will lead to abortions.

[Willfully Horn 8098]

^This is top shelf Surly.

Looks like I’ll get a chance at buttseks, after all.

 

Also, post-menopause passports.

Edited May 4, 2021 by Willfully Horn
Quip

[Ghost of LL 15605]

18 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Sounds to me like we can get together and sue anyone anywhere for engaging in the primary conduct that "aids or abets in the performance of an abortion" -- literally the "but for" action, without which there would be no abortion.  That's right, I'm talking about suing everyone in the State of Texas who continues to fuck after the passage of this bill.  No more fucking, people.  It will lead to abortions.

I think you and I need to get together and sue every member of the Board of Education for not teaching kids in Texas how to use fucking birth control.

[Judge Roybeanbag 11829]

2 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

 

This is also happening in Dripping Springs, just FYI.  

[Cousin Strawberry 1263]

2 hours ago, Ghost of LL said:

Imma gonna tap the brakes on this a bit.  Pre-Trump, Eanes was a Republican bastion in Travis County.  I'm too lazy to go back and look at the exact voting history of all those precincts, but I will tell you that my precinct has moved decidedly to the Democrats.  In 2012, my precinct went for Romney 53-44.  In 2020, it went 63-36 for Biden.

My point is this: I don't think we should be surprised that there are GQPers running for office in Eanes.  The surprise really is that they don't win.  Hell--that was a 10-point loss; the GQPers aren't even particularly competitive.

I think the most noteworthy point of this election in Eanes was the turnout.  In 2020, 24,000 people voted in Eanes in a presidential election.  In this election, more than 10,000 voted for school board.  That's a pretty small fucking drop-off in turnout from a presidential year (with historically high turnout) to a May election in an off-off year.  And given that the non-GQP candidates won pretty comfortably, I think it is a pretty good sign that Democrats remain engaged and eager to turn out in elections.

I'm pretty sure the spending difference was more than 3:1.  Last I saw, Jen Stevens had spent in the neighborhood of $150K on her campaign.  For a lousy school board seat.  That's absurd.

And the really weird thing is where some of that money was coming from.  A couple who is renting a place in West Lake Hills and send their kids to Trinity dropped $30K on her campaign.  Why?  I'm not sure.  It's a weird story that is so convoluted that I don't even feel comfortable trying to retell it.  Let it suffice to say that shit's fucking weird.

I think she said on Nextdoor that she actually contributed $60k and wished she would have given more. The other thing I found weird was a gentleman describing how Nigel Stout approached him while he was waiting to vote, talked to him about God and CRT. He said he decided to vote for Stout and Stevens as a result.  I can't recall a candidate for a local office ever approaching me as I was waiting to vote.   

[Guest Lobo]

14 months in and I'm still surprised at the crazy Covid shit coming out of Dripping Springs/Hays County.  I hear these anecdotal stories coming out of rural Texas, Florida, the Dakotas, etc.  And I think it's this whole world away, and then we go visit my cousins near Dripping Springs and shop/eat/meet their neighbors and I realize, "Oh yeah, this shit is literally happening just 25 minutes from my house."  

[Js1 85834]

She’s the embodiment of the modern GOP - you can’t do this, but it’s ok if I do

 

[Beau Vine 54952]

37 minutes ago, Lobo said:

14 months in and I'm still surprised at the crazy Covid shit coming out of Dripping Springs/Hays County.  I hear these anecdotal stories coming out of rural Texas, Florida, the Dakotas, etc.  And I think it's this whole world away, and then we go visit my cousins near Dripping Springs and shop/eat/meet their neighbors and I realize, "Oh yeah, this shit is literally happening just 25 minutes from my house."  

You go to the San Marcos HEB and you won't see a single person without a mask.  You go the Wimberley HEB and you might not see a single person with a mask.

[Beau Vine 54952]

Check out this woke, libtard column from the dangerously radical organization called the The National Review:

Quote

Mike Wood has done harder things than running for the House of Representatives, and some of those hard things he did in Afghanistan, where he won two Purple Hearts and a Navy Commendation Medal — which made it especially irritating for him to listen to fellow Republicans describe him as a “traitor” during his recent campaign in Texas’s 6th District. Wood has a direct, unadorned way of communicating (one section of his campaign bio begins, “After getting shot . . .”), a refreshingly stoic style in our age of hysterical politics. Emotionally incontinent displays are not his thing, but there is some tension in his voice when he sets that scene.

“Not a whole lot gets to me, but when some of these nut-jobs called me a ‘traitor,’ it got to me more than it should. I have scars on all four limbs from fighting for this country, but — because I refused to bend the knee to Donald Trump — I’m some sort of Benedict Arnold character. But that’s where our politics are right now.” Hearing about the Utah GOP’s treatment of Mitt Romney — the senator was denounced as a “traitor” and, of all things, a “communist” — Wood saw it as more of the same: “Disgusting.”

Wood, whom I first met when he was a National Review Institute Regional Fellow in Dallas, is the sort of candidate conservatives used to dream about: under 40, a decorated veteran, articulate, educated (bachelor’s from NYU and an MBA from SMU), a business owner with a big, photogenic family, he had everything going for him with the exception of one thing: apostasy.

Wood is one of a surprisingly large number of conservatives who opposed Trump in 2016 but supported him — voted for him, anyway, with whatever other qualifications or hesitation — in 2020. But he also has been plainspoken about the Trump movement, which he accurately describes as a “cult of personality” in thrall to loopy conspiracy theories. It was Trump’s post-election performance leading up to the events of January 6 that most troubles Wood, who calls Trump’s conduct “disqualifying.”

Some very wise political insiders in Texas advised Wood to tamp down the anti-Trump rhetoric, on the theory that while the GOP may be — may be — ready for post-Trump leadership, it is not ready for anti-Trump leadership. And those voices of caution probably were right as a matter of pure political calculation — Wood came in fifth among Republicans and ninth overall in the 23-candidate, bipartisan goat-rodeo of an election — but there is more to life, and more to political life, than calculation.

“I want to serve in elected office,” he says, “but I don’t want to go to Congress if that means I have to act like Madison Cawthorn or Lindsey Graham. If the cost of entry into Republican politics is that you have to pretend to buy into lies, then I don’t want to do that.”

Wood’s anti-Trump stance won him national media attention and the endorsement of the Dallas Morning News, but it did not win him a lot of support in the Republican rank-and-file. After the election, noted QAnon kook Marjorie Taylor Greene ridiculed Wood and Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of his political allies. The nice lady who thinks that California wildfires are caused by Jewish space lasers wrote that Wood and his backers are “clueless about what Republican voters think and feel” and that what Republicans demand is “America First and loyalty to Trump.” And, as strange as it is to write, the nice lady who thinks that California wildfires are caused by Jewish space lasers is almost correct: Wood is far from “clueless” about the Republican demand for “loyalty to Trump” — he is keenly aware of what Republican voters think and feel, but he believes that these thoughts and feelings are grounded in falsehood and paranoia that ultimately will destroy the Republican Party and do great damage to the country itself. And, to the detriment of his electoral prospects, he says so.

The race in the 6th will be resolved in a runoff, and the candidate expected to win is a Trump-endorsed member of the State Republican Executive Committee (Drain that swamp!) whose main claim to the seat is that she is the widow of the man who most recently held it.

It is a sign of the Republican times that the standout moment from Wood’s campaign was a confrontational talk-radio interview. DFW-area right-wing radio host Mark Davis, a presumably smart guy who hosts a multidimensionally moronic radio program, complained that Wood’s assertions about the facts of the presidential election were “condescending” in that they did not match up with how many members of his audience “feel.” Wood, exasperated, said: “This is one of the worst parts of what Trump has done to the Right — he’s turned us into a bunch of whiny little lefties. It’s all about ‘feelings.’ It’s all about ‘Well, you’ve got your truth, I’ve got my truth.’ ”

Davis, obviously caught off guard, fumbled around for a bit and then declared the exchange “wonderful radio.”

But it wasn’t wonderful radio — it was idiotic radio elevated only by the fact that one of the parties in the conversation understood it to be idiotic and had the guts to say so. It was also a textbook illustration of what ails the entertainment wing of the Republican Party at this unfortunate moment in time: cowardice. Davis and his kind are plainly terrified of their audiences and afraid to say anything that might make them uncomfortable, even if that means going along with B.S. so unmistakable that you can practically smell it through the radio.

One of William F. Buckley Jr.’s great escapades was his doomed 1965 campaign for mayor of New York City. He knew he wasn’t going to win. (“What is the first thing you will do if you win?” a reporter asked. “Demand a recount,” he answered, maybe the most famous bon mot in his extensive catalog.) But getting elected mayor wasn’t the point. There are those who can understand what the point was and those who can’t. The same is true of Mike Wood’s eight weeks as a politician. Let him with eyes see.

It is not clear to me that such a man as Mike Wood has a future in the Republican Party. If he doesn’t, then that is going to be a lot less of a problem for him than it is for the GOP.

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-tuesday/what-the-republican-party-needs-vs-what-it-wants/