Sunday, May 10, 2015

On Jade Helm 15, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Panders To Right-Wing Kooks

By Manifesto Joe

I suppose it should come as no surprise, but Texas' new governor, Greg Abbott, is a politician made up of as much pond scum as his predecessor, Rick "El Pendejo" Perry. Abbott's reaction to Jade Helm 15, the military exercise planned for Texas and other parts of the Southwest, is ample evidence of that.

Abbott put out an announcement that he will have the state National Guard keep an eye on the Jade Helm exercise, an apparent response to kook right-wing Internet rumors that the purpose of the exercise is to take over Texas.

Abbott was supposed to have been a politician made up of better stuff, at least ethically, than El Pendejo. His Democratic opponent last year, former state Sen. Wendy Davis, is a politician who has been haunted by ethics questions, and remains so. Skeptical Democrats were told that Abbott, then state attorney general, was made of better stuff as a person, whether we agreed with him ideologically or not.

Tell me another one. Abbott's reaction to the right-wing mania about Jade Helm 15 appears to be a way for him to hang on to the votes of the Kook Right, yet have an escape valve to disavow them if push comes to shove among the state's "moderate" or mainstream Republicans.

One doesn't win the votes of Texas Republicans, at least not enough of them to win statewide nominations, without the support of the tea party and other Kook Right elements. Ask former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who lost races to both Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate and Dan Patrick for re-election as lieutenant governor. No sane person is going to mistake Dewhurst for a liberal. Yet that is what Cruz and Patrick, both tea party faves, painted him as. And with electoral success. Cruz is now at work enraging the Republican establishment in the Beltway, and he is running for president. Patrick is busy selling a Religious Right agenda while presiding over the Texas Senate. Dewhurst is out of office, still enjoying his multimillions.

Abbott, we were often told, was going to be different. But how is he holding the state's crazed Republican Party together? In part, by not flat-out telling the tea partiers and others on the Kook Right what raving lunatics they are -- for example, over their demented rumors about Jade Helm.

None of this should come as a surprise. When one reads the state platform of the Texas Republican Party, they advocate just about every extreme right-wing cause, perhaps stopping just short of unleashing Chiang Kai-shek's musty remains on mainland China. This is one of the craziest Republican organizations in the U.S., and that's saying plenty.

Abbott is just one more Texas Republican politician, and a typically ugly one at that. Go ahead and group him in with Cruz, Patrick, and crazed Congressman Louie Gohmert, while we're at it. He's swimming in their water, for sure.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

re:
>>>Abbott was supposed to have been a
>>>politician made up of better stuff,
>>>at least ethically

According to who? The Washington Times? Breitbart? WND?
I'm not challenging what you wrote, I'm just curious about it. I don't pay that close attention to Texas politics. Maybe Abbott indeed was being touted as a ethical politician, but I just missed it.
The only thing I'd heard about this guy is that he won $10 million in a lawsuit against some unfortunate property owner on whose property Abbott happened to be jogging past.
And now, Abbott is opposing those very same type of lawsuits. If that isn't considered "unethical" I don't know what is. Being a big hypocrite is unethical in my book.
Conservatives, as always, have this attitude of "I've got mine, fuck everybody else."
It's like Limbaugh, who once admitted that he collected jobless benefits years ago. Now, of course, he's an outspoken foe of jobless benefits.
Even the "Libertarian" Paul Ryan benefited handsomely from the Social Security survivor benefits he got after his father died. That money put him through college. Now, this hypocrite wants to gut Social Security.

Manifesto Joe said...

That's what we were being told here. After 14 long years of El Pendejo, the leftish minority here was at least hopeful that Abbott wasn't going to be as bad. Looks like we should have voted for Costello. Who's on first, and what's in right field? (I held my nose and voted for Davis, and she got the shit beaten out of her.)