Greg Abbott has definitely cast his lot by throwing his muscle behind voter suppression, killing health measures, and failing to fix a broken energy grid. He is certainly courting those voters and he knows who to target. The question is whether those he targets will be there to vote for him when 2022 rolls around.

Multiple data points indicate that he may be fighting a losing battle. We know anti-vaxxers are more likely to be Republican than Democrat. Numerous other data points indicate that Republicans are dying at a much faster rate than their more progressive counterparts. Abbott certainly has taken care of making sure the wrong people can’t get to the ballot, but you have to wonder if he has stopped to consider that the right ones might be six feet under by the time November of 2022 gets here.

The Texas legislature, over long opposition by Democrats and the majority of Texans, passed the most radical voter suppression law of 2021, making Texas the worst state in the union to exercise the Constitutional right to vote.  The GOP knuckle draggers rammed through a bill that wiped out very popular voting alternatives such as drive through voting, extended voting hours, and easy vote by mail rules.  They also empowered partisan goons to intimidate voters at the polls, and criminalized mistakes an honest voter might innocently make.  In short, GOP Fuckheads pushed us back to the days of poll taxes, arbitrary voter tests, and Jim Crow laws with Jim Crow 2.0.

Zero days since Texas was a National Embarrassment, racing other Red States to the bottom.

Since Dems went to DC to air their grievance over voter suppression laws, Texas Trump Republicans are twisting themselves into knots trying to vilify them.  There’s talk from everyone from Abbott down to Brisco Big Hat Cain talking about vacations, fundraising, “cushy private jets”, so on and so forth, but the one that takes the cake is Trump Republican strategist Corbin Casteel, who said, “[The Democrats are] walking out the door right when they have an opportunity to get their staff paid when they’ve been complaining about it.  It’s a double-edged sword. They may be able to hold off on the voter integrity bill but they’re also screwing their own staff.”  Casteel is referring to the legislative staff, who’s paychecks stop on August 31 due to Abbott’s pocket veto of funding as retaliation for not getting his top priority bill passed in regular session.  That priority to fix the power grid, you ask?  No, silly, the voter suppression bill that makes it harder to vote in that state that is already the hardest in the nation to vote.

So, Abbott and the GQP are resorting to the same mob tactics as Trump – break something and then threaten the victims who don’t cave in to their demands.  Abbott could fix the problem he created with the stroke of a pen, and pressure will mount on him because he’s punishing Republican staffers with the same mob tactic.  We all know, including the Republicans pushing The Big Lie, that the whole “election integrity” issue is bullshit.  This entire issue is a desperate effort to cling to power.

So let’s be clear who the villains are – Abbott and his enablers in the statehouse, who are taking unprecedented actions to pander to their Trump base and keep people from voting.  It’s anti-democratic, unAmerican, and most certainly unTexan.  They must be stopped, and that will only happen at the federal level.

Mother Jones published a leaked video yesterday of the head of Heritage Action, the activist affiliate of the Heritage Foundation, which acts as a propaganda delivery mechanism for Republicans while masquerading as a “non-partisan research organization”.  The Heritage Foundation’s “research” consists of twisting up facts in order to justify conclusions paid for by self serving right-wingers and businesses.  In the video, the head of Heritage Action is bragging to big donors, taking credit for drafting the voter suppression laws that have swiftly been passed in GOP controlled states all over the country.  Here’s the video:

This is how oligarchy works.  Wealthy donors get government to work for them by doing the work of politicians who’ve been corrupted.  The only difference between the Republicans (and their owners) and Russians is that they haven’t killed those who stand in their way (yet).

For decades the Republican party has squawked about non-existent massive voter fraud as an excuse to pass draconian voting laws to make it harder for the “wrong people” to vote.  We all know that the “voter fraud” trope was just bullshit to cover the real reason, which was to reduce turnout of voters who typically vote for Democratic candidates.  With a few rare slip ups, the GOP has stuck to that script for years, repeating it so often that their base actually believes it.

That tactic has worked really well up until Trump took the Big Lie and turned it into the Gigantic Gargantuan Godzilla King Kong Lie.  Everyone in the US (except for Trumpists and Newsmax Morons) knows Trump lost the election because he got fewer votes than Biden.  All 50 states including the Red States certified their elections, and all of Congress with the exception of Trumpist ass lickers voted to certify the election.  Even Pence refused to interfere with the certification, and that’s really saying something.  The real problem for Republicans voter suppression efforts started a few months ago when legislatures in 43 states cited the Gigantic Gargantuan Godzilla King Kong Lie as the precise reason that it was an “urgent priority” to pass over 250 new restrictions that would do nothing to stop the massive fraud that doesn’t exist.  As many have said, the GOP came up with a solution in search of a problem.

Things went along swimmingly up until the moment Georgia passed their voter suppression bill that even criminalized giving people bottled water as they stood in hours-long lines to vote.  I believe they would have gotten away with the rest had they not made that one last overstep.  The backlash for that provision, and the law itself was so severe that big business finally had to pull its head out of the sand and take a stand.  Over the last couple of weeks, over a 100 company CEOs have condemned the laws not only in Georgia, but in many other states, and Georgia has been made an example of bad policy making which has brought out the truth of the voter suppression efforts.

Knowing that the Gigantic Gargantuan Godzilla King Kong Lie is no longer working, the GOP has taken on an entirely new tact – telling the truth.  One lawmaker, Arkansas Republican John Kavanaugh, actually came out and said it on national television, admitting that Republicans want not all votes, but just “quality” votes which translates to Republican votes.  Talking to CNN, he said:

“There’s a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans.  Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they’re willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote — but everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

“Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they’re totally uninformed on the issues.  Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

And there you have it – truth that didn’t just slip out inadvertently.  And so now this truth telling is even more obvious with the National Review now admitting that voter suppression laws really are voter suppression laws.  In one of the most tone-deaf articles (even for the National Review) was by Kevin Williamson who, in this tsunami of stupid statements posited this:

“There would be more voters if we made it easier to vote, and there would be more doctors if we didn’t require a license to practice medicine. The fact that we believe unqualified doctors to be a public menace but act as though unqualified voters were just stars in the splendid constellation of democracy indicates how little real esteem we actually have for the vote, in spite of our public pieties.”

He goes on about how we should vigorously test potential voters to weed out those “not qualified” to vote, which is simply a dog whistle for meaning those who might vote against Republican ideology.  The GOP even said it in a hearing last month in the Supreme Court when Michael Carvin, attorney for the Arizona Republican party had this exchange with Amy Coney Barrett about how Republicans want to toss ballots cast in the wrong precinct:

Coney Barrett: “What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?”

Carvin: “Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats.  Politics is a zero-sum game. And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretation of Section 2 hurts us, it’s the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing an election 51 to 50.”

Once again counsel for the GOP said in open court that they don’t care if a voter is qualified.  They’re trying to eliminate Democratic votes, period, end of sentence.  Since they’re now being truthful about their voter suppression, can they just PLEASE drop the Gigantic Gargantuan Godzilla King Kong Lie?  It would sure save a lot of time and a lot of column inches.

Yesterday, MLB made a terse announcement that the league is moving the All Star game AND the MLB draft out of Atlanta as a response to Georgia Republicans passing its voter suppression bill which included voter suppression tactics like stricter ID requirements and shortened absentee voting periods.  The worst provisions, though, included giving the legislature authority to reject county voting results, removing the Georgia secretary of state from the state elections board voting members, and the cruel criminalizing of giving water and food to voters standing in line.

In a statement, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said,

“Over the last week, we have engaged in thoughtful conversations with Clubs, former and current players, the Players Association, and The Players Alliance, among others, to listen to their views.  I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB Draft.

“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box. In 2020, MLB became the first professional sports league to join the non-partisan Civic Alliance to help build a future in which everyone participates in shaping the United States. We proudly used our platform to encourage baseball fans and communities throughout our country to perform their civic duty and actively participate in the voting process. Fair access to voting continues to have our game’s unwavering support.”

Joining Atlanta based Delta Airlines and Coca Cola, along with other companies, MLB is ratcheting up the pressure on the GOP to stop its massive voter suppression efforts in a desperate effort to cling to power as its demographic shrinks.   It worked in Indiana years ago when then governor Mike Pence signed the anti-gay bill that explicitly allowed private businesses to refuse service to people they didn’t like under the guise of “religious choice”.  After massive backlash against businesses and sports in Indiana, the state legislature “clarified” the bill by adding that, notwithstanding why the bill was written in the first place, it couldn’t be used to deny service to anyone.

That’s not good enough for Georgia, though.  The GOP must be stopped in its tracks in Georgia because it’s doing the same thing in 42 other states.  If companies, sports leagues, activists, and Americans stand against this anti-democratic and anti-American effort to consolidate power, this effort can be stopped.