Vox accuses Texas GOP of not governing as Lone Star Dems run and hide
August 16, 2021
Vox Media today said that when Texas Democrats fled the state so the GOP-controlled legislature couldn’t pass any bills favored by the majority, that “Texas Republicans have forgotten how to govern.”
Vox, ranked in the top 100 media sites in the U.S. with $100 million revenue, targets heads of households under the age of 35 years old, with high incomes. These are the most politically active people in their age group and likely have the most income to devote to charity and activism.
But VOX got this story wrong. It’s the Texas Democrats, in fact, who don’t want anyone to govern. Faced with a choice between accepting the results of the 2020 elections, Democrats have fled the mess they themselves have created.
It’s kind of hard for the GOP to govern when the Democrats won’t cooperate with a quorum at the statehouse. A quorum after all is the minimum necessary effort towards governing for the party out of power, as the Democrats are.
A GOP strategist says Texas Republicans are doing their job by legislating what GOP voters want. But at some point don't elected officials have a responsibility to protect the health and safety of their constituents, even if it’s not what their base wants?https://t.co/7Vi5kluB2h
— BriteHeart (@BriteHeartNow) August 16, 2021
Can you at least show up? No, say the Democrats.
In true progressive style, Vox is accusing the GOP of what the Democrat progressives are doing themselves. The Democrats in Texas want to avoid the consequences of losing an election by not showing up.
And Vox calls that governing by the Democrats.
By contrast, the Republicans in Texas have a large list of the legislation they’d like to pass for the voters who gave them the majority. But each item, that the GOP favors, says Vox, is just another tick mark in the so-called “culture war.”
Election reform? It’s the culture war says Vox. Abortion? More culture war. 2nd Amendment? Yawn. Culture. War.
Border security, mask mandate, Critical Race Theory? Culture War, culture war, culture war.
Vox contrasts the GOP list with a list of “pressing concerns” by the Democrats that aren’t part of any “culture war” according to Vox.
Defunding police: Not culture war.
Wearing ineffectual masks: Not culture war.
Federal expansion of Medicaid: Not culture war.
“These cultural war issues [Republicans favor] get people to hunker down in the trenches that they’re used to being in around elections and refocus voters’ attention on how much they hate the other side,” Zack Malitz, co-founder of the progressive Real Justice PAC and a former adviser on Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 Texas Senate campaign, told Vox.
As if Zach Malitz’s biggest issue with politics today is the hatred it creates.
There are no issues that are more toxic and generate more hatred than masking and defunding police. Culture war? These are the guerrilla battlegrounds of the left’s culture wars.
Malitz’s group does nothing but try to elect progressive DAs, defunding the police just by not prosecuting certain crimes. It’s one of the most highly charged subjects in politics.
Except maybe masking.
This week a leftist Antifa group labeled a conservative anti-mask group called “Choose Freedom March” as “fascists” and the two protest groups fought it out on the streets of LA with one person stabbed.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=PC2irHaYvuo
“In short, the brawl was chaotic and at least one person was stabbed during the incident, with reports suggesting that the man stabbed originated from the ‘Choose Freedom March’ group,” said Law Enforcement Today.
Running from the legislature as the Democrats in Texas did is a legitimate form of protest. And if that’s all the Democrats have to prevent the GOP from passing bills, they can do so and risk arrest.
Vox can call it protest, or insurgency or opposition, or rebellion.
But Vox should not pretend it’s the same thing as governing.
Even as they peddle the idea to the youngest, most naïve voters and donors.