I'm Watching The Texas GOP Convention, So You Don't Have To - Part Three

[Shell_Seas]

Texas Democrats Fight Back Against GOP Radicalism

https://www.lonestarleft.com/p/im-watching-the-texas-gop-convention-b0f



Tomorrow is the last day of the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) Convention, but the party said tonight’s general session could go as late as midnight. Today, the party elected its new RPT chair, presented its legislative priorities to the entire delegation, and established its party rules. They’ve gone to a Gala this evening and are supposed to reconvene at 9:00 pm to vote on a Vice Chair and adopt the new platform. We’ll get into all that, but before the Republicans’ day even started this morning, the Texas House Democratic Caucus (HDC) showed up at their convention and held a press conference about their extremism.

This is why I love Texas Democrats. From breaking quorum to prevent voter oppression to Jasmine Crockett taking MAGA extremism to church in Congress and James Talarico confronting white supremacy from the back mic in Austin, you can rest easy knowing that Texas Democrats are going to work hard to protect your rights. (Most of them, anyway.)

In attendance at this press conference were HDC president Trey Martinez Fischer, Representative Vikki Goodwin, Representative Gene Wu, Representative Josey Garcia, Congressman Joaquin Castro, and Adrian Reyna with the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel.

[LeftInTX]

1. Gene Wu was awesome! It was soooo hot out there! We melted!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Why the new platform from the Republican Party of Texas matters

Texas GOP platforms are often ridiculous, but the new installment touts a model that would effectively prevent Democrats from winning statewide elections.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/new-platform-republican-party-texas-matters-rcna154262

The latest installment is no exception. The Texas Tribune reported over the holiday weekend on state GOP delegates voting on a platform with all sorts of notable ideas, ranging to demanding Bible classes in public schools to seeking UFO information to calling for U.S. military bases to be named after Confederate leaders who took up arms against the United States.

But The Texas Tribune also highlighted one of the state Republican Party’s newer priorities.

Perhaps the most consequential plank [in the platform] calls for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win an election, a model similar to the U.S. electoral college. Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office.

It’s been a few decades since a Democratic candidate won statewide office in Texas, and with that in mind, it’s tempting to think Republican officials would be satisfied with the state’s electoral system as it currently exists......

And that's where this newly proposed county-based requirement would kick in, shifting power away from voters in order to ensure Republican rule. As historian Kevin Kruse explained:

If Texas Republicans embrace this return to a county-unit type of system, they’ll actually have created something even more unequal than the scheme concocted by segregationists of a century ago. Harris County, the home of Houston, has a population of 4.7 million, while Loving County has a total population of 64. Harris County has a sizable black population, while Loving is (as far as I can tell) entirely white. But one vote in Loving would mean more than 70,000 votes in Harris.

Kruse added, “It’s staggeringly unequal, and silencing an ‘urban’ vote that is of course now not just coded as more liberal but racially diverse too. And that, of course, is the point.”

This is, in other words, the latest example of Republicans looking at democracy as something that needs to be rigged, rather than a system that needs to be preserved.

Texas is becoming more urban and democratic. This plan is designed to disenfranchise democratic voters in large urban areas such as Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Ft. Worth. This plan shows how scared the Texas GOP is of the demographic trends that show that Texas is turning blue