Or, As They Say In The Texas Lege...

This is how @POTUS wins in a walk. https://t.co/DYq9YkAe27

— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) January 10, 2023

(not coincidentally, meeting today in Austin to start the new session. "HIDE THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN! LOCK UP THE LIVESTOCK! THE LEGISLATURE IS IN SESSION! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!"): 

"You gotta dance with the one what brung ya!"

And the GOP is going to deeply, deeply regret that.*

*(They won't, actually.  They'll blame the "Deep State" and the international ring of Democrat pedophiles and black helicopters (whatever happened to them? Not crazy enough, unlike Jewish space lasers?) and RIGGED ELECTIONS! for their failures in 2024.  American politics is a many-splendored thing, but it seldom moves far from basic variations on a theme.  I am now convinced this is not the "new normal," but simply "normal."  Millennials who think this is a gross aberration in American history learned all their history from Boomers starry-eyed over "winning" the protest of the Vietnam war and the legislative triumphs of LBJ (far, far beyond the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act, monumental as those were).  That enthusiasm for government carried over into the '70's even in Texas; and was roundly buried by the supporters of Ronald Reagan, many of whom (Rick Wilson, though he was Cheney's man; Bill Kristol in the flesh at the time; et al.) now recant the faith that led us here. (Some Texas laws were reversed back to the 19th century, just to erase the stain of "progressivism" from the '70's.  Doubly ironic since the Texas Constitution was a product of 19th century populists and progressives.  American history is full of such ironies.) But the aberration was LBJ and the '70's; just as TR was an aberration that set a few new norms which FDR cemented into place.  It's not all bad: Newt recently raised the idea of allowing child labor again because, you know, poor kids should earn their kindnesses from the wealthy; and Social Security is the Big Dare again.  One step forward is always followed by two steps back, but we never quite go back.  We just never really go all that far forward.

Same as it ever was.)