I live in Texas. And, in Texas, there's currently a lot of hand-wringing and navel-gazing going on among the Texas Lock-Step Political Media (TLSPM) regarding what it is to be Texan and what MAKES people Texan and why it is that a still-solid majority of the state's know-nothing populace continues to vote Bible-thumping, know-nothings into office despite their providing reams of evidence that the key to transforming Texas into a modern-day Shangri-La is three-fold: 1. Stop fighting with Washington D.C. and just accept all of their spending mandates. 2. Shutter the State's largest industry and go green. 3. Increase taxes to confiscate whatever wealth is left.
Of course, the TLSPM won't admit this because they understand that to do so would mean a tacit admission that they deeply dislike a majority of their customers and, even they get this, that is a bad business model. So they write curt little editorials and stories praising "fracking" and suggesting that the oil and gas industry can survive, provided they adhere to, and stop pushing back against, all of the Federal regulations that are coming their way. What the TLSPM doesn't realize is that the people in charge of the federal regulatory state are members of the "keep it in the ground" movement whose goal is to cease all oil and gas production on federal lands. (Or, more likely, they do understand this but expect that their readers don't.)
But Texas has always been an odd place for a political journalist. The reality is that, except in Austin, you're going to be widely disliked in Texas but adored almost everywhere else. Take Molly Ivins, who made a career of calling George W. Bush "shrub" repeating a few West Texas aphorisms and calling it a day. Was Ms. Ivins a very talented writer/thinker? Not really. But she was a Democrat in a reddening Texas that seemed intent on voting in the wrong kind so that was enough for the rest of the nation. It didn't matter what Ivins actually said, or if her ideas even made sense, what mattered most of all was that she poked sticks in the eyes of Texas Republicans.
Fast forward to today and the devolution has continued. "Texsplaining" is now a thing, policy is not examined based on merit but on how the author feels about it and the qualification for expertise is that someone has a family who has lived in Texas for a long time. What people don't realize is that being a sixth-generation Texan doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things if you didn't learn any of the self-reliant lessons of the past.
All of this brings us, belatedly, to the Texas GOP who, despite having been in charge of the State for the past 20-odd years, finds itself in a dilemma.
One thing that has fueled the TLSPM, has kept them going and has provided safe-harbor during the Democrat's time in the political deep-sea, is that the GOP is not all that great at this governing thing. I'm being serious here. Yes, the Texas Legislature is keeping the lights on and passing budgets and doing things. But really, are they doing any more than some grad-level accounting students could do?
Right now Texas just (barely) dodged yet another school finance lawsuit bullet, is running out of funds to build and maintain roads and is about to come face-first with the reality that the State's primary income driver is in the midst of what is sure to be a prolonged downturn.
The Texas GOP response? State-wide potty legislation and a candidate for Railroad Commissioner whose primary talking point is that he's pro-life. The Governor is going around telling everyone who will listen (and some who won't) that he's called for a convention of the States and is primarily concerned with Federal Government overreach while doing very little himself to insure the operational integrity of the state bureaucracy. In a time when the GOP should be attracting Hispanic voters in droves the top elected Republican in Texas has decided that the number one issue in the next legislative session should be sanctuary cities. The Lt. Governor has decided that he doesn't like the Statism of Texas' cities and wants to replace it with a Nanny-state of his choosing while the Comptroller is just fervently hoping that no one can figure out he's out of his depth. There's an AG who is most probably guilty of securities fraud, a Land Commissioner who's unaware of the working of his own department (or that, increasingly, it's held in lower regard than the Federal Government in terms of industry relations and regulation) in his quest for higher office and an Ag Commissioner who probably should not have been elected to the position of dog catcher but (to his credit) is using his bat-shittiness to play the TLSPM like a fiddle.
Fortunately for the Texas GOP, the Democrats are worse. They are the side-show to the GOP's main act, a collection of functional idiots whose primary contribution to the political process in Texas is snark directed toward the voters. They insult Texans, and then spend two or three weeks in a deep state of depression after each election because the same voters rejected them. They have a gaggle of journalists and bloggers (the self-mockingly named "netroots") whose primary job is to remind Texans just how much they don't like the Democrats. It works to great effect if election results are any indication.
The Texas GOP cannot just sit around and hope that the Democrats remain stupid forever. Eventually they are going to nominate a candidate who brings more to the table than a "moonshot for Texas education" and pink tennis-shoes. Eventually they are going to find some candidates with the ability to articulate a vision that their growing numbers support. In short, the Texas GOP (and the national GOP for that matter) needs to stop being against some things and start being FOR something. They need a purpose, and a place, and it has to be and mean more than "government bad!" because there's ample evidence that this message is just not going to cut it any more. Gone are the days where the GOP can scream "Cut government and cut taxes on the rich to create jobs!" and expect this message to resonate.
Last weekend the wife and I took a road trip and saw the dilapidated state of Texas infrastructure. Our roads are a mess, small towns deteriorating, a sense of malaise in people's faces. In old-times Texas was filled with a can-do spirit and a rugged-individualism that, to be honest, has been somewhat romanticized (and overstated) in print and film but which was present at the same time. When Texas started to boom it did so because of low-taxes and a reasonable regulatory environment. It's important to note that there should be no rush to change this. The GOP should still stand for a light regulatory hand and sensible government that works.
But they also need to realize that the electorate is changing, that there is a base-level of government competency that people expect to see. It's not good enough to have low taxes but have an increasing amount of toll-roads and every highway that is not one be ones that developing countries would look at and say "that's OK, we'll pass". It's not good enough to have an education system that's bloated, going broke and trying to sue it's way to solvency, to have a higher education system that's ran by modern day robber barons who realize that they have an almost unrestricted ability to raise their prices to impossibly high levels with zero repercussions due to both subsidy and their monopoly on supply.
But the GOP also needs to understand that even the real-life rugged individualism that Texas once possessed is no longer there. If you find yourself getting disillusioned with Texas lately it's largely because there are very few Texans left living here. The very things that gave the State an advantage are now being looked down upon by transplants and a younger voter who didn't learn the lessons of the wild-catter, or only learned the wrong lessons. This is a problem that the GOP needs to both address and come to grips with, to figure out how they're going to re-teach this to a generation whose education centered around a fuzzy-headed college professor who never spent time in the private market and whose idea of economics begins and ends with the writings of Karl Marx.
And then, there's the elephant in the room. Or, rather, the lack of elephants in the room. Because the biggest problem the GOP is facing right now is similar to the one Texas is facing. Increasingly, when you look at the GOP, in both Texas and around the nation, it's becoming pretty clear that there are no Republicans in it.
