Looking for something really hair-raising to read? Check out the 50-page platform that was just adopted by the Texas Republican Party.
The document, approved at the party’s biennial convention in late May, is not a serious policy road map. But it does reveal the id of a political party that has gone off the deep end.
Just a few of the platform’s planks: that the Bible should be taught in public schools, with chaplains on hand “to counsel and give guidance from a traditional biblical perspective based on Judeo-Christian principles.” That noncitizens who are legal residents of this country should be deported if they are arrested for participating in a protest that turns violent. That name changes to military bases should be reversed to “publicly honor the southern heroes.” That doctors who perform abortions should be charged with homicide. That the United States should withdraw from the United Nations and that the international organization should be removed from U.S. soil.
Then there is this audaciously undemocratic provision: To be elected to state office, a candidate must win not only a majority of votes, but also more than half of Texas’s 254 counties. Let me translate what that means. Democrats in Texas are concentrated in a few urban areas, while Republicans are spread across the map. This system would effectively mean Democrats — who, as it is, haven’t won a statewide office since 1994 — would be shut out forever.
Traditionally, the core mission of state parties is to do the basic work of winning elections: recruiting candidates, organizing, fundraising, registering voters. Texas Republicans, however, are on an ideological crusade to push the state further to the right and purify their own ranks, even as the state party’s coffers dry up and its donor base shrinks .
Those endeavors are likely to alienate more moderate Texans — that is, if they are actually paying attention. Voter turnout in the state is notoriously low, which is one reason the wing nuts hold so much sway.
The latest round of primaries and runoff elections saw 15 Republican state House members lose to far-right challengers. House Speaker Dade Phelan managed to squeak by in Tuesday’s runoff by less than 400 votes against a challenger who had Donald Trump’s endorsement, as well as those of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Attorney General Ken Paxton and the most recent party chairman, Matt Rinaldi.
Rep. Tony Gonzales, the Republican congressman who represents Uvalde, where the mass shooting of 19 children and two adults took place in 2022, barely won his runoff against a gun zealot who refers to himself as “The AK Guy,” a reference to his fondness for Kalashnikov assault rifles.
Both Phelan and Gonzales were censured last year by their state party. The speaker’s punishment was for a “lack of fidelity to Republican principles and priorities” after the House impeached Attorney General Paxton for corruption. (The state Senate refused to convict him.) The congressman’s reprimand was for a handful of heresies including his vote for the modest gun law changes in the wake of the massacre at Robb Elementary School.
Lest rank-and-file GOP voters ever again be allowed to override the activists who run the party machinery, the convention approved a new rule preventing any candidate who is censured from appearing on the ballot for two years.
More sensible Republicans — yes, there are still some in Texas — worry that their party is bent on its own destruction.
Travis County Republican Chairman Matt Mackowiak is one of them. Citing “five years of neglect, dishonesty, self-dealing, and blatant anti-Semitism” within his party, Mackowiak joined a crowded field vying to replace outgoing state chairman Rinaldi at the convention. He lost to the far-right favorite, who was Rinaldi’s handpicked successor.
“The party has been taken over by people who have no interest in running a healthy, growing party,” Mackowiak told me. “It feels to me that we’re going to keep going down this road until Democrats start winning statewide elections in Texas, and then Republicans are going to wake up.”
How might that happen? In recent years, the state has gained more new residents than any other. Many of the people who are coming from other places are attracted to Texas’s conservative economic policies, which have helped to produce a robust business climate. But they may not feel the same about political leaders who are trying to impose social policies that would turn the clock back a century or two.
I don’t believe Texas is on the brink of turning blue in the immediate future, especially in an election year with Trump at the top of the ballot. But these days, its persistent red tinge may partly be one of embarrassment.