• Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Because there Texas GOP is corrupt as fuck. I’ve lived in Austin since 2000 and I’m getting the fuck out of the State.

  • e_t_@kbin.pithyphrase.net
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    1 year ago

    Do you suppose this Dunn fellow aims to become dictator of Texas himself, or is he content to be the power behind the throne?

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    In 2015, an agitprop shop affiliated with his backers, the short-lived website AgendaWise, registered the opinion that Paxton’s election to AG offered “hope for all Western governments.” He’s the last good man in Texas, McKinney’s own Winston Churchill—if you trade the brandy and cigars for afternoon margaritas and late-night fast food.

    He radiates a preternatural sort of anticharisma.There are countless Republicans with law degrees and histories of electoral success waiting in the wings to follow in the footsteps of John Cornyn, Greg Abbott, and Ted Cruz as soldiers of the office of the attorney general.

    The patriotic wave that resulted from the 9/11 attacks, combined with sky-high approval ratings for our Texan president, helped win the GOP the state House, the last Democratic-controlled institution in Texas, for the first time since Reconstruction.

    Dunn and his constellation of groups spent millions helping Paxton as he faced candidates who were arguably more right-wing (Barry Smitherman, a former Railroad Commission member and author of If Jesus Were an Investment Banker) and more respectable (Dan Branch, a state representative who looked like a Bush cousin and had the politics to match).

    The Legislature could have forced the attorney general to defend the TEC, but it did not do so; if doing a favor for your biggest donor were prima facie evidence of a quid pro quo, most of the Texas state government would be in jail.

    If Abbott appoints state senator Bryan Hughes to serve as AG, to pick one example, conservatives will have a more effective and capable advocate to lead the office—arguably one more committed to right-wing causes and less vulnerable at the ballot box.


    The original article contains 2,936 words, the summary contains 273 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!