From God Save Texas (Lawrence Wright, 2018) pp280-3
ABOUT 1,100 NEW LAWS went into effect after the 2017 legislative season. Among them: children under the age of sixteen will no longer be allowed to marry; faith-based adoption agencies will be permitted to deny placing children with gay parents; and Texans can now openly carry swords, a welcome development for the samurai in our midst.
The special session of the legislature that Governor Abbott called was a disappointing end for cultural conservatives, however, concluding without property tax reform, a compromise on school finance, or the bathroom bill. Dan Patrick blamed Joe Straus. “Thank goodness Travis didn’t have the Speaker at the Alamo,” Patrick said. “He might have been the first one over the wall.” The state did commit to continuing to study the high rate of maternal mortality, at the same time passing new restrictions on abortion and doing nothing to improve access to health care. The special session passed a law limiting local ordinances on trees, although it was not as comprehensive as the governor had wanted. Large cities will be required to hold elections for residents in areas targeted for annexation. These measures were part of a larger attempt to disempower cities, which Dan Patrick said were responsible for all the problems in America. The reason: “Our cities are still controlled by Democrats.” He cheerfully observed, on the Fox Business Network, that “almost a thousand Democrats were defeated running for the local state houses and state senate and governors and lieutenant governors … We own the turf state by state, and Texas leads the way.”
Not addressed by the legislature was the low quality of education in Texas, which is near bottom nationally in most measures of overall achievement. Texas spends $10,000 a year per student – $2,500 below the national average – an indication of where education stands in terms of the state’s priorities. Racism may play a role in the steadily decreasing state support for public schools, but whatever the motivation, the workforce of the future has already been handicapped.
Texas also ranks low in terms of its infrastructure-the roads, dams, pipelines, parks, railroads, energy systems, wastewater treatment, and drinking water that modern civilization relies upon. It’s not just a matter of aging structures and poor maintenance. For a state that is projected to double in population in thirty years, Texas has done little to prepare itself. For all of the boldness that Texans often boast of, there is timidity about confronting the challenges in front of us. But that’s not the direction the social conservatives who rule the state are facing. They instinctively look backward, to a time when homosexuals were unseen, minorities were powerless, abortion was taboo, business and industry were largely unregulated, and science stood respectfully in the shadow of religious belief. Texas is not alone in its assault on diversity, nor in its determination to shove government out of civic life, but without high-quality education and modernized infrastructure the knowledge-based industries of the future will find other states, and other countries, in which to plant themselves. The refusal to face these challenges head-on seems to me not only imprudent but decidedly un-Texan.
Joe Straus received a vote of no-confidence by his own chapter of the Republican Party in San Antonio, a gesture repeated in a number of other caucuses in counties around the state. The ostensible reason was Straus’s failure to advance the Texas GOP platform. That platform includes demands that the U.S. government surrender all of its authority over abortion back to the states, and that until then federal laws permitting abortion be ignored; that U.S. senators be appointed by state legislatures, rather than elected by the citizens; that the IRS, Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, and a number of other federal agencies be abolished or defunded; that traffic enforcement cameras be removed; that a photo ID be required of all voters; that the U.S. Supreme Court ruling permitting gay marriage be overturned; that Social Security be phased out; that federal gun laws be ignored; that the Federal Reserve System be abolished and precious metals be reinstituted as the standard for the U.S. dollar; that the minimum-wage law be repealed; that the U.S. withdraw from the United Nations and from international trade agreements, such as NAFTA; and that a high border wall be built along the Mexican border, wherever it is deemed “effective and cost-efficient.” This document is a template for the future agenda of the Republican Party not just in Texas but in the nation.
Straus seemed to give the rebellion in the party caucuses little thought. He promised to run for a record-breaking sixth term as Speaker. Then, on the morning of October 25, he held an impromptu press conference in his office and announced that he would not seek another term. “I didn’t want to be one of those people who held on to an office just because he could,” Straus said. “There are new players and they deserve to have their voices heard.”
Perhaps he was bowing to the inevitable. The House Republican Caucus was pushing a plan that would allow them to designate the candidate for the post, making Democratic votes irrelevant. Straus’s enemies were exultant. “We did it!!! Speaker Straus is gone,” Jonathan Stickland tweeted. “The future of Texas has never looked brighter.” Julie McCarty, the president of the NE Tarrant County Tea Party, a statewide organization headquartered in Fort Worth, took credit for Straus’s departure. “No, I will not allow Straus to waltz off in celebrated thanks for his ‘service,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “I will be David. I will mount Goliath’s head on a sword-the saber I was awarded by Empower ‘Texans for being a grassroots hero-and I will dance! I will display this victory for all to see, for the birds to peck at, for my fellow warriors to recognize God’s hand in delivering our enemy and to be motivated that God is not done yet, for others who wish to follow in Goliath’s footsteps to be warned what awaits them.”
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