Republican Party of Texas

[Cartmann99]

I decided to start a thread to save the scrolling fingers of those not interested in the topic.

Texas GOP Website Crashes After Push for Vote to Secede From U.S.

Quote

The Texas Republican Party's website went down Monday afternoon following reports of several controversial policy positions included in their official platform.

The party's state convention over the weekend was muddled with several incidents, including a right-wing activist berating Representative Dan Crenshaw as well as backlash over banning a group of gay Republicans from setting up a booth at the convention.

But parts of their policy platform have drawn significant attention—and criticism. The party voted on measures that, if passed, would urge state lawmakers to secede from the United States and support a complete abortion ban.

On Monday, as reports over the controversial policy positions spread across social media, the state party's website appeared to be down. Links to the website only yielded a page that read: "Error establishing a database connection," rather than the website itself. The website was also down for at least part of the weekend, as well.

The state party had not issued an official statement on the outage, and Newsweek reached out to the party's press office for comment Monday afternoon.

One particular tenet of the platform that has received attention is support for a referendum that, if supported by a majority of Texans, would allow the state to secede from the United States.

The policy urges the state Legislature to require a referendum in the 2023 general election that would allow Texans "to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation."

Still, experts cast doubt that Texas could actually secede from the United States legally. Jeffrey Abramson previously told Newsweek that "there is absolutely no legal basis for Texas to secede from the Union." It remained unknown if the platform tenet had formally been passed by the Texas GOP.

The party's Permanent 2022 Platform & Resolutions Committee also advanced a resolution claiming the 2020 presidential election violated the Constitution, revealing the extent to which former President Donald Trump's unfounded claims of voter fraud have taken hold within the Republican Party.

Delegates also voted on a measure that called for "equal protection for the unborn," urging lawmakers to completely end abortion in Texas. The state already has one of the most restrictive abortion measures in the U.S., and a trigger law banning the procedure could go into effect if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

Another part of the platform that faced criticism contained language that would define homosexuality as an "abnormal lifestyle choice."

 

Spoiler

 

[Audrey2]

Really even though we could use the oil I want to say go ahead and leave Texas and you can take Trump with you. Turn Texas into a Trumpopia.

Give it a 1-year period to allow people to move from the United States into the land of Trump and people who live in Texas who wish to get out to leave the land of Trump..

[GreyhoundFan]

[fraurosena]

Five to ten years? Nah, it’ll be a dictatorship within a year or two.

I don’t think they’ll survive either. What with Texan infrastructure already being more than halfway on the way to collapse, and Maga politicians completely uninterested in fixing the grid, for example, it won’t be long at all.

And Texan oil? Well, someone will need to buy it. And if there aren’t any good treaties/deals with the US, Texas will soon find itself as isolated as Russia is now.

[47of74]

11 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Really even though we could use the oil I want to say go ahead and leave Texas and you can take Trump with you. Turn Texas into a Trumpopia.

Give it a 1-year period to allow people to move from the United States into the land of Trump and people who live in Texas who wish to get out to leave the land of Trump..

I wonder what all these reich wing dipshits are going to do when the various branches of the military and Federal government operations pull up stakes and leave Texas?  Or what they'll do when all the jobs supporting military/government operations in Texas goes bye-bye as the military is redeployed to other locations and businesses follow them?  Along with business in general - I can see a lot of industry (aside from that sociopathic douche cannon Musk's companies) closing up shop in Texas and heading to other states.  Or if shipping companies start taking the long way around Texas instead of going through?  

These sticks of fuck really haven't thought this thing through now. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

19 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

These sticks of fuck really haven't thought this thing through now. 

Critical thinking is not their strong suit.

[GreyhoundFan]

From Dana Milbank: "Texas Republicans want to secede? Good riddance."

Quote

The Lone Star State does not have the best track record as a sovereign power. The Republic of Texas survived only 10 years from independence to annexation by the United States in 1845. Texas seceded during the Civil War — and, with the rest of the Confederacy, was crushed.

But, as the saying goes: If at first you don’t secede, try, try again. The Texas GOP now wants the state to vote on declaring independence.

And the United States should let Texas go! Better yet, let’s offer Texas a severance package that includes Oklahoma to sweeten secession — the Sooner the better.

Over the weekend, while many Americans were celebrating the 167th anniversary of Juneteenth (when Union Gen. Gordon Granger, in Galveston, Tex., delivered the order abolishing slavery) the Texas Republican Party voted on a platform declaring that federal laws it dislikes “should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.”

The proposed platform (it’s expected to be approved when votes are tallied) adds: “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.” It wants the secession referendum “in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”

Yee-haw!

Of course, protections would have to be negotiated for parts of Texas that wish to remain on Team Normal. Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and parts of South Texas would remain in the United States, and they will need guaranteed safe passage to New Orleans or Santa Fe, along with regular airlifts of sustainable produce, accurate textbooks and contraceptives.

But consider the benefits to the rest of the country: Two fewer Republican senators, two dozen fewer Republican members of the House, annual savings of $83 billion in defense funds that Texas gets. And the best reason? The Texas GOP has so little regard for the Constitution that it is calling for a “Convention of the States” to effectively rewrite it — and so little regard for the United States that it wishes to leave.

In democracy’s place, the Republican Party, which enjoys one-party rule in Texas, is effectively proposing a church state. If you liked Crusader states and Muslim caliphates, you’ll love the Confederate Theocracy of Texas.

The Texas GOP platform gives us a good idea what such a paradise for Christian nationalists would look like. Texas would officially declare that “homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.” It would redefine marriage as a “covenant only between one biological man and one biological woman,” and it would “nullify” any court rulings to the contrary. (The gay Log Cabin Republicans were banned from setting up a booth at the convention.) It would fill schools with “prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments” but ban “the teaching of sex education.” It would abolish all abortions and require students to “learn about the Humanity of the Preborn Child.”

The Texas Theocracy, which maintains that President Biden “was not legitimately elected,” would keep only traces of democracy. It wants the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “repealed,” and it would rewrite the state constitution to empower minority rule by small, rural (and White) counties. It would rescind voters’ right to elect senators and the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

The Texas Theocracy would probably be broke; it wants to abolish the federal income tax, “Axe the Property Tax” and do away with the estate tax and various business taxes. Yet it is planning a hawkish foreign policy! The platform argues that Texas is currently “under an active invasion” and should take “any and all appropriate measures the sovereign state defines as necessary to defend” itself. It imagines attacks by a “One World Government, or The Great Reset” — an internet-born conspiracy belief — and proposes “withdrawal from the current United Nations.” The Theocracy would put the “wild” back in the West, abolishing the minimum wage, environmental and banking regulations, and “red-flag” laws or waiting periods to prevent dangerous people from buying guns.

Above all, the Confederate Theocracy of Texas would be defined by thought police. It would penalize “woke corporations” and businesses that disagree with the theocracy over abortion, race, trans rights and the “inalienable right to refuse vaccination.”

Government programs would be stripped of “education involving race.” Evolution and climate change “shall be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change.” There would be a “complete repeal of the hate crime laws.” The Texas Revolution “shall not be ‘reimagined’” in a way the theocracy finds “disrespectful.” Confederate monuments “shall be protected,” “plaques honoring the Confederate widows” restored, and lessons on “the tyrannical history of socialism” required.

In their platform, the Texas Republicans invoked “God” or the “Creator” 18 times and “sovereignty” or sovereign power 24 times. And the word “democracy”? Only once — in reference to China.

 

[47of74]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

From Dana Milbank: "Texas Republicans want to secede? Good riddance."

 

I think they should allow cities like Austin, Houston, and so on to decide if they want to split off from Texas and remain in the Union. 

I don't think President Biden should sit on this.  He should be out demanding right now Texas either reaffirm its loyalty to the United States and the Constitution in the next five minutes or prepare for expulsion from the Union tomorrow.  And sign a shitload of executive orders moving all Federal military personnel and equipment out of Texas, suspend all Federal government operations in Texas including the post office, and send construction equipment to rip up every US highway and interstate at the Texas border. 

[Ozlsn]

I would be interested to see what happened if this went to a referendum. What is the required margin? First past the post, basic majority? Two thirds? Three quarters? Do all counties need to have voted with that margin?

I'd really like to see an honest campaign around it. What do you stand to lose here - US citizenship, the federal money, probably most multinational headquarters, federally funded armed forces etc. What do you stand to gain? Harder to answer if you're not a white male...

[47of74]

I wrote my Congressional delegation and said Texas needs to be put on the fucking spot right now as to where its loyalties lie.  And included how the 34th Infantry in Iowa helped out on June 19, 1865 down in Texas to bring an end to slavery and how the First Minnesota fought pretty goddamn hard against the Confederate traitors.  And ended with either they affirm their loyalty to the Union here and now or they get cut the fuck off. 

[Sarcastically spinster]

17 hours ago, 47of74 said:

I don't think President Biden should sit on this.  He should be out demanding right now Texas either reaffirm its loyalty to the United States and the Constitution in the next five minutes or prepare for expulsion from the Union tomorrow.

That really wouldn't be fair to, like, the majority of Texas residents.  Just because a few nuts are trying to push this doesn't mean that the majority of the state agrees, or is being represented well by those nuts.  That kind of ultimatum is likely to lose him a lot of popular support with Texans who may not support any attempts at secession, but also would resent strong arm tactics like that.  

IDK how closely you followed the Scottish referendum a few years back, but if you just listened to political platforms and the media you would have thought Scottish independence was a done deal.  Actually held the referendum, and it lost by a 10% margin with insanely high turnout.  Popular support was emphatically not for independence.  

Treating the actions of a few nuts like they're actually representative of the state as a whole actually legitimizes them.  Probably better to just ignore them as fringe unless it starts to look like they have significant popular support.  The more extreme the Republicans get, the more they're going to lose people who lean conservative but have a functioning brain and heart.  I know many people who were Republicans before Trump but want nothing to do with being the party of Trump.  Texas pride is strong, and many people consider themselves Texans first and Americans second, but they still want to be part of the US.  A Republican party that's campaigning on a secession platform is going to lose a lot of them.  

[Alisamer]

On 6/21/2022 at 12:02 AM, fraurosena said:

And Texan oil? Well, someone will need to buy it. And if there aren’t any good treaties/deals with the US, Texas will soon find itself as isolated as Russia is now.

I'm sure the remaining US will happily buy Texan oil. For pennies. As little as possible. It won't take long for the whole state to collapse into abject uneducated poverty, that will continue to worsen over time, and with no taxes to pay for anything they'll take whatever pittance anyone is willing to pay. 

58 minutes ago, Sarcastically spinster said:

 A Republican party that's campaigning on a secession platform is going to lose a lot of them.  

I certainly hope so. 

I think the biggest problem the US (including Texas) has right now is the fact that Republicans are the minority of the population, but have managed to tweak and cheat the system to the point that the majority simply cannot win in many cases. And they've managed to do that so well that I don't know how that mess can get corrected. Part of it is leftover from the days they wish to go back to, when only white male landowners were allowed to vote. But some of it is new. 

I would, however, be fine with Texas seceding. Bye. Hopefully the sane people will be able to get out quickly, as will all the companies who aren't MyPillow and similar. Perhaps we could work out an exchange program - Republicans in Florida or Georgia and Democrats of equal means in Texas could just trade places. Democrat has a mansion in Galveston? Trade it with a Republican who has a mansion on Sanibel. Living in a trailer outside Austin? Trade it with a Republican who has a trailer outside Orlando. 

[CTRLZero]

On 6/21/2022 at 7:12 AM, 47of74 said:

These sticks of fuck really haven't thought this thing through now. 

This is really the case.  For starters, I’m assuming they mean to behave like a separate country. Do the secessionists really want the hassle of going through border patrol to visit relatives in another “country” like, say, California?  My neighbor has parents across the border in Canada.  It’s not always easy for them to freely visit, especially in a pandemic.

20 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

Republicans are the minority of the population, but have managed to tweak and cheat the system to the point that the majority simply cannot win in many cases.

Exactly this. 

[47of74]

2 hours ago, CTRLZero said:

This is really the case.  For starters, I’m assuming they mean to behave like a separate country. Do the secessionists really want the hassle of going through border patrol to visit relatives in another “country” like, say, California?  My neighbor has parents across the border in Canada.  It’s not always easy for them to freely visit, especially in a pandemic.

Exactly this. 

Yeah could you imagine the lines at places like Thackerville, Oklahoma where I-35 crosses in to Texas or Waskom, Texas where I-20 crosses into Louisiana.  Hell I wouldn't be surprised if the traffic was backed up all the way to Shreveport (abt 20 miles) heading into Texas.  Might be faster for truckers just heading across to New Mexico and points westward to take the long way around if the borders are closed.  And what would these idiots say if America got it in their head to build a wall around Texas to keep Texan Q nuts in Texas?  I imagine it would go over like a lead balloon with them.

That's not even getting into the headaches with currency, or having to reconfigure DFW to put all the gates behind passport control, or so on.

I still think the Texas government needs to be put on the spot and made to answer right now where they stand - whether with King Orange Dumb Fuck I or the United States.  And that needs to be a question put to every Republican running for every office in Texas.  It may not make much different in Branch Trumpvidian hellholes but in more politically diverse areas it might be enough to turn people against Republicans.

[libgirl2]

I say let them go. I welcome it. Trump can become their king. I wonder if they realize if the secede the US military is going with them? I just feel sorry for some of the people there, but they need to do something. Enough is enough. 

[47of74]

23 minutes ago, libgirl2 said:

I say let them go. I welcome it. Trump can become their king. I wonder if they realize if the secede the US military is going with them? I just feel sorry for some of the people there, but they need to do something. Enough is enough. 

Or that the United States is not likely to agree to any Schengen Area type deals with Texas like in Europe where people could freely pass back and forth and it'd be more like Mexico as far as the borders go.  And full on passport control at airports and transit stations.  I bet some of these dummies have never experienced the joy that is US passport control in their rather useless lifetimes.  Borders may be open for a while but if Texas and the US do a divorce agreement it may be that eventually the border controls get put in place and anyone who hasn't moved from Texas is stuck there and considered to have traded in US citizenship for Texas citizenship. 

[libgirl2]

21 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Or that the United States is not likely to agree to any Schengen Area type deals with Texas like in Europe where people could freely pass back and forth and it'd be more like Mexico as far as the borders go.  And full on passport control at airports and transit stations.  I bet some of these dummies have never experienced the joy that is US passport control in their rather useless lifetimes.  Borders may be open for a while but if Texas and the US do a divorce agreement it may be that eventually the border controls get put in place and anyone who hasn't moved from Texas is stuck there and considered to have traded in US citizenship for Texas citizenship. 

If Texas goes anywhere, it should go back to Mexico. 

[Xan]

53 minutes ago, libgirl2 said:

If Texas goes anywhere, it should go back to Mexico. 

Mexico doesn't want them.

[Ozlsn]

1 hour ago, Xan said:

Mexico doesn't want them.

And vice versa. I am amused by imagining the reaction of the people proposing this if they woke up to discover they were now a minority in a non-English speaking country.

6 hours ago, Alisamer said:

I think the biggest problem the US (including Texas) has right now is the fact that Republicans are the minority of the population, but have managed to tweak and cheat the system to the point that the majority simply cannot win in many cases. And they've managed to do that so well that I don't know how that mess can get corrected

I think the whole system needs to be looked at again from federal level down. What worked well at the time of conception in the 18th century may not be the best model in the early 21st century. Also fully politically independent bodies running the entire thing across all levels would help.

[47of74]

16 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

And vice versa. I am amused by imagining the reaction of the people proposing this if they woke up to discover they were now a minority in a non-English speaking country.

I think the whole system needs to be looked at again from federal level down. What worked well at the time of conception in the 18th century may not be the best model in the early 21st century. Also fully politically independent bodies running the entire thing across all levels would help.

There's some people who think the whole Constitution should be replaced with a new one and have been for several years now.

Quote

America, we've got some bad news: Our Constitution isn't going to make it. It's had 224 years of commendable, often glorious service, but there's a time for everything, and the government shutdown and permanent-crisis governance signal that it's time to think about moving on. "No society can make a perpetual constitution," Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1789, the year ours took effect. "The earth belongs always to the living generation and not to the dead .… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years." By that calculation, we're more than two centuries behind schedule for a long, hard look at our most sacred of cows. And what it reveals isn't pretty.

If men (and, finally, women) as wise as Jefferson and Madison set about the task of writing a constitution in 2013, it would look little like the one we have now. Americans today can't agree on anything about Washington except that they want to "blow up the place," in the words of former Republican Senator George Voinovich as he left Congress, and maybe that thought isn't so radical.

Clocking in at some 4,500 words—about the same length as the screenplay for an episode of Two and a Half Men—and without serious modification since 18-year-olds got the vote in 1971, the Constitution simply isn't cut out for 21st-century governance. It's full of holes, only some of which have been patched; it guarantees gridlock; and it's virtually impossible to change. "It gets close to a failing grade in terms of 21st-century notions on democratic theory," says University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson, part of the growing cadre of legal scholars who say the time has come for a new constitutional convention.

What a convention might look like is for the public to decide. It might, as Levinson proposes, be populated by citizens selected by lottery and given two years and plenty of staff and resources to come up with something. Or it might look like what Dranias and Lessig propose, where 38 states can come together to agree on the text of an amendment and then present it to Congress and demand ratification. "The most important thing a convention would do is to simply jump-start and conduct a national conversation that we're not having," Levinson says. After all, the status quo isn't working. We badly need a more perfect union.

The article pointed out the US one is the hardest one to change and that it's not keeping up with the times.  Along with not even Americans using our Constitution as a model when helping other countries write constitutions.  The article pointed out how after World War II the US occupation authorities structured the government on a Westminster parliamentary system like what the UK, Canada, and other commonwealth countries use.  US didn't use the Westminster system because the US wanted to be different for better or worse after the Revolutionary War.

[47of74]

Meanwhile cause everything Texas is a giant stick of fuckery Tesla asked Texas owners to avoid charging

Quote

Tesla sent over-the-air (OTA) notifications to drivers in Texas asking owners to avoid charging their EVs during peak hours of energy use. The request appeared on Tesla dashboards amid a record-setting heat wave that strained the Texas power grid, and prompted its operator, ERCOT, to warn of possible blackouts.

As a response to the unprecedented power demand during the extreme heat, Tesla and ERCOT asked drivers and residents in Texas to conserve electricity by not charging their EVs from the afternoon through the evening and by turning up their thermostats at home.

The message from Tesla cited different peak hours than ERCOT, as Electrek shows, but it was essentially the same period of time. Tesla’s prompt said:

A heat wave is expected to impact the grid in Texas over the next few days. The grid operator recommends to avoid charging during peak hours between 3pm and 8pm, if possible, to help statewide efforts to manage demand.

 

[47of74]

I hope it’s because this asshole got fired 
 

Quote

Law firm BakerHostetler has removed its online profile for a lawyer who is a member of a Texas legislative caucus that said it wants the state to disbar attorneys who assist women seeking abortions.

The firm's webpage for Cody Vasut, a member of the Texas House of Representatives and the conservative Texas Freedom Caucus, became inaccessible starting Thursday, two days after Reuters reported on his group's position on lawyers and abortion. Until then Vasut was listed on the Ohio-founded firm's website as "of counsel" in its Houston office.

Vasut is also no longer included in the firm's alphabetical online directory, and at least one other BakerHostetler webpage related to his work at the firm is now offline.

Vasut did not answer phone calls and emails seeking comment, and a BakerHostetler spokesperson and firm leaders did not respond to repeated questions about his employment status there. Vasut has not filed any notices of status change in ongoing court matters.

 

[47of74]

Once again the Texas Taliban didn’t think this one through

 

[libgirl2]

10 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Once again the Texas Taliban didn’t think this one through

 

This is what happens when they think they can bring in the "right" faith. You can't have one and not have the others. I'm just waiting for a satanic sign. 

[47of74]

39 minutes ago, libgirl2 said:

This is what happens when they think they can bring in the "right" faith. You can't have one and not have the others. I'm just waiting for a satanic sign. 

I want them to do "In God we Trust" in Turkish.  Or "Allaha güveniriz."  Mentioning Allah would really drive the Texas Taliban up the wall.  Or Persian: به خدا ایمان داریم

Anything to drive these Branch Trumpvidian sticks of fuck up the wall.