Texas GOP: Welcome to the Funny Farm. The time for change is long overdue

By Carolyn Shore Aresu as Libby Shaw.

When I posted my return to the U.S. from France on Facebook this morning, one friend in Texas wrote" welcome back to the funny farm." And so I read yesterday and today's editions of the Houston Chronicle to see what my friend meant.  A funny farm indeed.  The Texas GOP, completely bereft of issues and ideas that matter to most Texas voters,  has resorted to Rovian labels, scorched earth intolerance and Orwellian sound bytes.

As we learned during the recent Republican primary election season the Texas GOP is not running on issues that  would address the needs and interests of most of the state's voters.  Most Republican candidates instead are running on purely far right ideological platforms.  The ideology, of course, includes bigotry, exclusion, misogyny, homophobia,  religious extremism, hatred of the President, and xenophobia.  

Since the GOP cannot blatantly run on such core "values" it has to resort to projection, spin, sound bytes and labels.  It all comes down to tricking the electorate by playing the hate and fear cards.   And by supporting open carry gun rights, of course. Bang, bang.

There was plenty of most of the above at the recent state Republican convention.

Let's start with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and projection. At the  state's GOP convention Ted Cruz blasted "Liberty is under attack like never before."

When Cruz himself took the stage Friday under the huge dome of the Fort Worth Convention Center, the crowd of more than 8,000 leaped to its feet in rapturous applause.

He recalled the landing on D-Day and the siege of the Alamo. He declared: “Today, liberty is under assault like never before. And again today, Texans will stand up and lead the fight for freedom.”
Four years ago, Cruz was not even a footnote at the state GOP convention.

Translation:  liberty is under attack because an overwhelming majority of Americans voted for President Barack Obama .   Of course it is Ted Cruz's Party in Texas that has launched a full throated attack on women's and voter's rights.   And now it's gunning for gays.

The party of Cruz found itself this week in some exotic places in pursuit of freedom: a platform debate over “reparative therapy” to turn gay people straight and the rights of open-carry advocates to visit Target with AR-15s over their shoulders.

Critics of Houston’s new anti-discrimination ordinance denounced it as “the sexual predator protection act.” Lieutenant governor nominee Dan Patrick offered evidence that the GOP is not anti-women.

“We will, I will, do everything we can to protect women from a man in a dress going into a woman’s bathroom,” he told an anti-gay marriage rally Thursday night. “So, which party wants to protect women?

When the time came to introduce Cruz at the rally, Houston conservative activist Steve Hotze said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next president of the United States.”

I don't think so, Dr. Hotze.  Your hate based  conservatism, by the way, has been overwhelmingly rejected in Houston when the City Council passed the equal rights ordinance.

Dan Patrick, by the way, is a major supporter of the Texas sonogram, anti-choice bill that resulted in cutting off low income women from access to reproductive planning and women's health care needs.  Watch the self-righteous snake oil dealer in action.  God is on his side.

Cross posted on Texas Kaos.