chasfm11 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2019 6:44 am
I attended a meeting last night which featured, as speakers, three member of the Texas Legislature - 2 House members and a senator. I would judge them all to be men of integrity and applaud their courage for coming before what I will characterize as somewhat hostile but restrained audience. They were all given unlimited opportunities to make opening and closing remarks but fielded questions from the audience as a panel. There were large differences of opinion among them on most of the key legislative efforts from this session, both those that passed and those that did not.
The recurring theme of the evening was a focus on redistricting and it was stated that the desire of this session was to make sure that there was a Republican majority in both Houses when that happened.
My interpretation was that there was "concern" (I would have called it cowardice) in the aftermath of the Cruz/Beto results among the Texas leadership, not just Bonnen. The panel was asked the specific question "Does Bonnen have a plan for keeping Texas Red?" The answer was "yes" but not even a hint of the aspects of such a plan were shared. The information provided was unconvincing to me.
The previous month, a spokesman for the Republican party provided remarks that 1 million NEW Republican voters will be needed to counter the gains of the Democrats for 2020. I have to scratch my head wonder exactly how anyone is supposed to attract one single new voter when the Republican platform on which the leadership for this session ran was so wildly abandoned. "Don't vote for Democrats" doesn't seem to be a winning theme, at least to me.
To be fair, we were told that there was significant educational reform in the $5B that was given school funding. It remains to be seen if the failure to stop union payroll funding - much of which bankrolls Democratic political efforts and the failure to address voter fraud can be overcome. Bonnen was clearly behind the efforts to scuttle fixes for both of those problems. Appeasement never works IMHO.
Well, exactly who I vote for may not be set in stone, but I assure you that I, for one, will NOT vote for ANY Democrat. I haven't seen any current Democrat who isn't a gun-grabber, in one form or fashion. That said, I certainly do worry about the leadership of the Republican Party in this state.