Old Times There Are Not Forgotten

 First, let me tell you how pleasing this is:

The animosity comes ahead of a special session — likely in October — over school choice legislation that has already turned into a lightning rod for conflict between Senate and House Republicans. For the past several legislative sessions, rural House Republicans have blocked voucher legislation favored by the Senate, and Phelan and Patrick also spent much of the summer warring over the details of their chambers’ respective property tax bills.

There is a concerted, and visible to a blind man (by which I mean nobody’s talking about, so nobody’s talking about it. No, I didn’t repeat myself. Try to keep up.), effort among conservatives represented by the Texas Senate (and by the way, I don’t agree with the conventional wisdom that Lite Guv Patrick rules that roost. I think it’s more accurate to say they are of one mind in that chamber. A hive mind. A demented mind that cares only about a truly evil and anti-democratic ideology. What else do you call a determination to end public education in Texas? I’ve seen it up close and personal. I’m very serious.) to end public education in Texas (okay, that time I repeated myself). The supposedly deep red rural areas of Texas won’t let it happen.

I’ve never lived in a Texas town small enough to see it up close, but devotion to public schools in rural Texas is not just about Friday Night Lights. In areas where agriculture can be feast or famine (my favorite orchard, where I’ve been going for 20 years to get peaches 🍑, has great years and years when they close a month or two early. And except for pumpkin sales for two months, they’re only open in the summer), and oil and gas is boom or bust (the two mainstays of rural Texas economies), school is always there and the job is always steady. Women in my church worked for the local schools back when I was in school (not around here), back when where I live now was miles from Houston (we’re now the newest “close in” neighborhood). Those jobs meant a lot to them, because most of their husbands were farmers. 

It’s hard to understand that in urban areas; but it’s very real, and continues to protect us all from the lunatic senators who are not as close to their constituents as the representatives are. 

It’s complicated.

But there’s a bonus:

The possibility of an even deeper rift has already prompted some in the party to call for reconciliation, fearing a Pyrrhic victory for the winner of the escalating civil war. 

“The radical and divisive nature of the situation in Texas now is going to cost us terribly,” former Amarillo Sen. Kel Seliger said in an interview. “And who is going to bring the party back together once we have really torn ourselves apart, once we’re done?”

 I wonder if this isn’t a truth of American politics since 1776? Or maybe 1792? We need an enemy. If it wasn’t immigrants or races, or foreign enemies…

Well,  that explains the Cold War and the lunacy of the GOP since the Soviet Union collapsed and left us as a “hyper power” (that didn’t last long, huh?)? I’m not sure it explains the GOP devouring each other like rats sealed in a barrel.

Because, especially in Texas, that’s what I see. There effectively is no Democratic Party in Texas. Beto might have defeated Cruz if there had been. But while it promotes candidates and some of them get elected, as was proven last week, the power is all with the GOP. And having no opposition to rally against, they are destroying each other in a spiraling battle for purity.

The GOP is dead, in Texas and nationally. It’s not a political party anymore; it’s gangs of derelicts fighting in the ruins. The gangs in Texas are fighting to eliminate the opposition among themselves, the arch-conservatives from the arch-arch-conservatives. It’s actually a pretty old fight, when I think about it that way.

Pass the popcorn.