Beto O'Rourke Can Take his West Coast Politics and Stick 'Em Where the Sun Don't Shine: The Texas Redistricting Battle

You can take your like and shove 'em on up the line.
People in Texas don't care if the sun don't shine.

Charlie Daniels

"Texas"

Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently called a special session of the state legislature to draw new boundaries for the Lone Star State's congressional districts. The legislature is controlled by Republicans, and the redistricting process is expected to conclude with more districts going to Republicans in the next election.

Democratic legislators cried foul and more than a dozen fled the state to prevent the legislature from raising a quorum. Many sought refuge in blue states--California and Illinois in particular. California Governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker welcomed them with open arms, accusing Texas Republicans of unfairly gerrymandering district boundaries to benefit their party.

As several commentators have pointed out, the blue states are masters at gerrymandering, with Illinois being the gerrymander in chief. Illinois redrew congressional district boundaries in 2020, which resulted in fewer Republican victories in the 2022 congressional elections.

Wealthy West Coast progressives have poured millions of dollars into Texas election battles, hoping to make Texas as blue as California.  In 2018, Robert Francis O'Rourke, a totally unqualified progressive candidate, raised an astounding $80 million in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Senator Ted Cruz in the most expensive Senate campaign in history. Much of this money came from wealthy Californians.

O'Rourke recently formed a political organization called Powered By People to raise money to help absent Texas legislators pay their expenses during their out-of-state holiday. Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General, sued O'Rourke and his organization, accusing them of illegal fundraising in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

A few days ago, a Texas judge issued a temporary restraining order barring O'Rourke and Powered By People from aiding the recalcitrant Texas legislators. Among other restrictions, the judge's order prohibited the defendants from:

Using political funds for the improper, unlawful, and non-political purposes of (1) funding out-of-state travel, hotel, or dining accommodations or services to unexcused Texas legislators during any special legislative session called by the Texas Governor, or (2) funding payments of fines provided by Texas House rules for unexcused legislative absences. 

Ultimately, I believe Governor Abbott and the Republicans in the Texas legislature will prevail. At the end of the day, congressional district lines will be redrawn to give Republicans a better chance of prevailing in upcoming elections. 

Texans are tired of out-of-state money pouring into their state to undermine traditional Texas values. If the wealthy West Coast progressives are unhappy with the new district boundaries, they can take their unhappiness and stick it where the sun don't shine.

 

The U.S. is not like 1930s Germany, or is it?

 Progressive Democrats are tirelessly accusing the Trump administration of being a fascist regime and comparing it to 1930s Germany.  Kamala Harris insinuated that  Trump is a Fascist during the 2024 presidential campaign. Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz recently compared ICE agents to the Gestapo. Al Gore compared the Trump administration to Nazi Germany, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker made a similar comparson last February.

This is bold talk coming from the Democratic Party, which hoodwinked the American people by installing Joe Biden, a cognitively diminished grifter, as the leader of the Free World, and then backed perpetually befuddled Kamala Harris to succeed him. 

Nevertheless, these gasbags are right to compare contemporary America to the Weimar Republic during the years that saw Hitler come to power.

First, the Weimar Republic was racked by political violence fomented by both the Left and the Right. Similarly, our country has seen a rise in political violence in American cities--most notably the George Floyd riots.

Second, like Germany, America is wracked by vicious antisemitism in the nation's universities. Who could have foreseen this ugliest form of racism springing up in academia, which has been obsessed for more than three decades with diversity, equity, and inclusion?

Finally, and most disturbingly, the United States, like Germany between the World Wars, is seeing the frightening specter of political assassinations, including two assassination attempts against President Trump and the recent murder of a young Jewish couple in Washington, DC.

Our nation has endured periods of violence, bigotry, and racism before. Americans weathered the Salem Witch Trials, the rise of anti-Catholic Nativism in the 1850s,  the Klan eras of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and McCarthyism. Those were ugly times, but American democracy survived.

However, the present unrest, which progressive Democrats have misdianosed, is different. This time around, our political malaise is stewing in an inflationary economy, and inflation, like a match thrown into a barrel of gasoline, threatens an explosion that can destroy our society.

When Money Dies, Adam Ferguson's masterful study of the German economy in the years before Hitler came to power emphasized the existential threat that inflation posed to Germany:

Undoubtedly, . . . inflation aggravated every evil, ruined every chance of national revival or individual success, and eventually produced precisely the conditions in which extremists of Right and Left could raise the mob against the State, set class against class, race against race, family against family, husband against wife, trade against trade, town against country. It undermined national resolution when a simple want or need might have bolstered it.

 Drawing on the German experience after the Central Powers lost World War I, Ferguson concluded that the collapse of a nation's currency is catastrophic.

If what happened to the defeated Central Powers in the early 1920s is anything to go by, then the process of collapse of the recognized, traditional, trusted medium of exchange . . . unleashes such greed, violence, unhappiness, and hatred, largely bred from fear, as no society can survive uncrippled and unchanged.

Today, while progressive Democrats indulge in incendiary rhetoric, the dollar is running the danger of being replaced as the world's reserve currency. At the same time, President Trump confronts a ballooning national debt and stubborn inflation.

I'm pessimistic about the prospect of Trump getting inflation under control. Nor do I think he'll be able to rein in the national debt. Indeed, it is probably politically impossible for him to do so.

When it becomes clear to the average pensioner, Social Security recipient, and Medicaid beneficiary that their standard of living is plummeting and they cannot purchase their basic needs, we will see big trouble. God help us if the United States stumbles down the path of the Weimar Republic.