The Vicious Infighting Between Texas Republicans May Be the State’s Only Hope
The madness continues
When I was in the Army a lifetime ago, I was stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia; roughly 40 miles away in Savannah was Hunter Army Airfield, then the home of the 2nd Ranger Battalion. We often crossed paths with the Rangers while drinking on River Street in Savannah and there was one thing that we could always count on. If a group of Rangers had not found any townies to fight by midnight, they would just fight each other.
It sounds crazy, I know, but not all that surprising for a bunch of hardcore warriors in their late teens and early 20s who thought they were ten feet tall and bulletproof. It is more surprising when it’s a group of middle-aged men and women who probably haven’t done a push-up since before the internet was invented, but that’s what we saw with the Texas Republican party over the past few weeks.
Following an intra-party war during the legislative session that required the governor to call multiple special sessions to get any bills passed, the Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, the only other politician who faces as many pending legal proceedings as former President Donald Trump. The Texas House has a number of what passes today as “moderate” Republicans, and when joined by all of the Democrats there were more than enough votes to impeach Paxton on 16 articles charging disregard of official duty, misapplication of public resources, constitutional bribery, conspiracy and attempted conspiracy, dereliction of duty, unfitness for office, and abuse of public trust.
Totally separate from the impeachment, Paxton has been under felony indictment for state securities fraud for the past eight years and under investigation by the FBI for nearly three years. Given the seriousness of the impeachment charges, the fact that it was a Republican-controlled House that impeached him, and his other ongoing issues, one would logically assume that he would be quickly convicted when the trial took place in the Senate.
Because this is Texas, one would be wrong. Paxton was acquitted yesterday on all charges and immediately reinstated as Attorney General of Texas. That is because the Republicans who control the Texas Senate are not “moderate” unless you are comparing them to Atilla the Hun; they voted as a bloc to acquit him. There is a war going on between Republicans in the House and Senate, and it’s only intensifying. Immediately after the verdict, Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (who also serves as President of the Senate) slammed Republican Speaker of the House Dade Phelan for wasting the taxpayers’ money by bringing the impeachment in the first place.
Just like with my Ranger comrades in the 1990s, the elected officials of the Republican Party in Texas have shown that when you can’t find anyone else to fight, you’ll fight each other. Thirty years ago, the vote to convict Paxton would have been unanimous, but thirty years ago he would never have been re-elected twice while under indictment for fraud. Apparently, we get the “leaders” we deserve.
At this point, you might expect that I am about to launch into an epic rant about the book-banning, Trump-loving, malfeasance-ignoring, even-Jesus-is-too-woke Republicans who control my state. I’m not, and the reason surprises even me. The ultra-conservative Senate Republicans have given me something I didn’t have two days ago: hope. Before you decide that I have an undiagnosed concussion, hear me out.
The charges against Paxton were so egregious and the support of his ideological allies in the Senate so blatant that I honestly believe there will be consequences for at least some of the hard-Right candidates in the 2024 primary, and hopefully for many of them. The party is miles from the Reagan Republicans of the 1980s and even the Bush Republicans of the 1990s who still worked with Democrats to get things done, but perhaps, just maybe, this miscarriage of political justice that was broadcast live on every local channel for the past ten days will be a launching pad for candidates who are conservative but not crazy and a wake-up call to the millions of voters who have simply sat out past elections. If not, we have only ourselves to blame.
You’ll notice I said “the primary” in the paragraph above. That’s because this pipe dream of “Turning Texas Blue” in the general election that talking heads in New York love to predict every election year is just that, a pipe dream. It will continue to be a pipe dream as long as Democrats continue to nominate candidates like vacuous pretty boy Beto O’Rourke hoping to elect a Democrat to statewide office for the first time since Davy Crockett arrived at the Alamo. This state will not be changed by turning it blue, but by turning it a far lighter shade of red.
Maybe what I’m suggesting is as much of a pipe dream, but I hope not. The alternative is an even stronger hold on the state by people like Ken Paxton and Dan Patrick, a descent into hell that will leave me no choice but to move, and you just can’t get decent Tex-Mex in North Carolina, South Carolina, or Georgia, which are my only other options. It might not make sense to anyone not from here, but the idea of living outside the South is something I can’t even wrap my head around.
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