Welcome to a Memorial Day morning brief. While we pause to remember those who have paid the ultimate price for our freedom, let’s redouble our own efforts to reject oppression at home and abroad.
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Today’s stories
SB7, this session’s omnibus election integrity bill, died last night after Democrats fled the chamber to deprive the legislature of a needed quorum.
There are several contributing factors to the bill’s demise, but delay and mismanagement by Texas House leadership shoulder the largest share of the blame.
Speaker Dade Phelan has prioritized Democrat bills while he and his cabal have Waterdown and killed Republican measures. He’s a bad actor.
As was the case in 2013, when Wendy Davis filibustered to stop a pro-life measure, last night’s gambit only delays the inevitable.
Texas was already going to have a special session in the fall to deal with redistricting. Now, Governor Abbott will be forced to call one ahead of that to deal with this latest affront to the rule of law and disrespect of the electorate.
Last night, Abbott was quick to issue a statement adding election integrity to “the” special session agenda, stating lawmakers would be expected to have a solution ready when they “arrive.”
This suggests Abbott will let lawmakers leave town; something he said would not happen until election integrity was done since it’s an emergency item.
In the weeks leading up to last night, discussions around a possible forced special on election integrity and other priorities included 100% certainty from some that Democrats wouldn’t risk a special with the accompanying red meat they typically entail.
Whoops.
Still, others suggested that Democrats, facing another decade-plus of obscurity in the Lone Star State, should make a scene and parlay that energy, an inverse nothing from nothing approach. With Speaker Pehlan’s help, Democrats passed several items and then spiked the election integrity bill.
Now the problem for Democrats in 2021 is they don’t have a natural receptacle for the energy that a special session will create for the party. It seems as though the front runner might be Jimmy Talarico (D-Round Rock).
The second term representative with Buttigieg energy is a political lightweight, less talented than Wendy Davis, most famous for claiming there are six genders. If Jimmy ends up being the new standard-bearer, he’ll flame out harder than Beto.
DEMOCRATS aren’t anywhere close to turning Texas blue; sorry, Brendan.
GOP political consultant Brendan Steinhauser is incorrect about general elections becoming more competitive in the next several election cycles. He’ll be even more wrong if the GOP continues to embrace the populist strain injected into it by President Trump.
Contrary to Steinhauser’s and leftist conventional wisdom, the GOP is poised to attract younger and more diverse voters.
Demographics are destiny has been thoroughly rejected, but the naysayers don’t want to let it go as a talking point and mechanism for arresting the GOP’s energy.
The downward trend for Donald Trump, Republicans retained control in 2020 due to Never-never Trumpers, paired with a Democrat base motivated to vote at the top of the ticket.
That public policy this session is trending right is an indicator of where the state is now and likely to be over the course of the next decade, Republican.
The highwater mark for Democrats has been reached, and Republicans, without much effort, have been able to withstand the push.
As mentioned in this newsletter previously, the GOP was in far worse shape in 2010 than in 2020.
Hit the links
Austin ranks among US cities where housing affordability is falling fastest
Rep. McCaul: Covid origin 'worst cover-up in human history
Schumer desperate appears bent on Democrats evisceration in 2022
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