Texas Republicans Are Sewing Extremism Into the Fabric Of Their Party | Vanity Fair
By: Eric Lutz
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Texas Republicans over the weekend wove a tapestry of extremism.
At its Houston convention Saturday, the state GOP put forth a party platform that calls to "abolish abortion," attacks homosexuality as an "abnormal lifestyle choice," and formally rejects Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 election. It also rebukes Republican senators—including Texas conservative John Cornyn, who was booed as he spoke at the event — who took part in gun reform negotiations with Democrats in the wake of last month's Uvalde elementary school massacre. It is a thoroughly radical doctrine, the kind that previous incarnations of the party might have softened up a bit, if for no other reason than to avoid turning off voters not already part of the base. But the party outright dismissed an effort by some of its delegates to do just that, underscoring not only how far to the right the GOP is continuing to move, but how brazen it has become in doing so.
"Donald Trump radicalized the party and accelerated the demands from the base," Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, told the Texas Tribune. "There simply aren't limits now on what the base might ask for."
The GOP has never exactly been a big tent party. But it used to try to convince voters it was — and occasionally even aspired to be one, at least for the sake of its own survival. "It is time to smartly change course, modernize the Party, and learn once again how to appeal to more people, including those who share some but not all of our conservative principles," the Republican National Committee wrote in an autopsy of Mitt Romney's loss in the 2012 election. "Our standard should not be universal purity; it should be a more welcoming conservatism."
But Trump's upset win in 2016 taught them that, rather than running away from their extremism, they could run on it. Indeed, the GOP establishment a decade ago worried that culture war grievance was cold water dampening their electoral prospects; Trump showed them it was actually kerosene that could be ignited to fire up the base. And, at the GOP convention in Texas over the weekend, there was no shortage of kindling to keep that blaze going.
During the three-day event, Texas Republicans administered a right-wing purity test that even some of the most conservative lawmakers in Washington could not pass: Cornyn faced jeers for taking part in gun control talks with Democrats, even as he bragged that he had used his seat at the negotiating table to scuttle Biden's "gun-grabbing wish list." Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who lost an eye in combat, was physically confronted by convention-goers, including apparent Proud Boys, who mocked him as "Eye Patch McCain" — a nickname apparently originated by Fox News' Tucker Carlson. "Dan Crenshaw is a traitor!" one of the hecklers shouted at him during the incident, which was captured on video. "He needs to be hung for treason!"
Those incidents might be brushed off as outbursts by members of the frenzied base, except delegates would go on to codify that radicalism into the state GOP's official party line: The platform committee on Saturday passed an agenda that, in addition to its culture war salvos, also calls for the repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, while delegates in a voice vote approved resolutions rebuking Cornyn and other Republican senators and declaring "acting President" Biden was "not legitimately elected" in 2020. Some Republicans felt the party was going too far: Donald Trump Jr., of all people, criticized the Texas GOP for blocking the Log Cabin Republicans—the largest conservative LGBT group—from taking part in the convention, and at least a couple of delegates voted against the platform's anti-LGBTQ plank on the basis that it "does nothing to move us forward as a party and gain voters."
But this is not a party that has shown much interest in moving forward. Instead, as the Texas GOP convention over the weekend made plain, most of the party's energy seems to be focused on executing ugly culture wars and re-litigating an election that was settled close to two years ago now. Perhaps that's a roadmap to ruin; in a nation navigating numerous, complicated crises, a political party should have more pressing concerns than policing peoples' gender identities, as Texas Republicans seek to do in their platform. But Republicans, in Texas and beyond, are betting that embracing an ever more radical agenda — sewing Trumpian extremism into the fabric of their party — will earn them rewards rather than rebukes at the ballot box, a grim prospect that polls suggest could come to pass. "In November, a red wave is gonna sweep across Texas and this nation and begin a new era," Matt Rinaldi, chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, told convention-goers. "We need to be a bold and unapologetic conservative party, ready to go on offense and win the fight for our country."
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Fix our nations problems? I don't think so.
it's interesting when 2 separate psychosis' merge...
What's in the water down there?
treated sewage from every state directly north of it. I drank bottled water when I was down there.
I read they had a resolution that the Log Cabin republicans were not allowed.
The only thing these republicans are doing is stupid culture wars.
They're a bunch of fools. They need the Log Cabin Republicans
Attacking a disabled vet, sad commentary.
Yeah. None of these people are patriots
But, but Tucker Carlson, old pencil neck is leading the charge for them to ''take our country back''...
He would shit his pants if someone handed him a rifle and ordered him to stand a post
All because they are parroting that jackass tucker carlson.
The bigoted dweeb.
How could Texas Republicans not be the epitome of WOKE when Anfȕhrer Drumpf is the wokiest of them all?
I swear they are pushing for some kind of Christian theocracy.
They think the Handmaid's Tale is a how-to You Tube video
The republicans ... Biden has trashed the country, we are going to take it back...
In actuality, they spend their time trying to erase gay people from mainstream and treat women as second class citizens while trying to dictate what children can and cannot learn.
The only thing they have for the economy is drill baby drill. Tired old rhetoric.
I read where one of their resolutions on gun control was no red flag laws...
They would rather arm and train teachers. Fucking morons.
Where did you read that, about whom?
Red flag laws can be and have been abused.
If schools secured the buildings, teachers wouldn't need to be armed.
Any law can and has been abused. It doesn't mean we throw them out.
So we know you are against red flag laws. You know Florida, where the republican beloved DeSantis is from, they have one.
I need to find it but what I read at first was they also wanted to take away all restrictions, including letting felons have guns.
Yes, we do and there is also a 21 year old age requirement to purchase a weapon.
The ''red flag'' law in Florida has been quite successful and it is has been used extensively.
The irony of that comment coming from the left is staggering.
I am sure they at Vanity Fair had a meeting and are patting themselves on the back for coming up with something so clever. To most people it just makes them look more like The Enquirer than an organization that wants to be taken seriously.
More, "No! You can't do that!" from the party of no.
No knowledge not tainted by Ignorance and Pettiness. No Forbearance. No Nuance. No Soul.
Driving us right back to the dark ages.
Projection.
The plethora of “no’s” we hear coming from the left are ever present and copious.