Author’s Note: I know many of you have expressed concern about Juanita. I got in touch with her yesterday. She is experiencing some health problems that she would not get into. They are not life threatening but she is taking a break from writing for awhile. I and the others will do the best we can to give you something to chew on until she feels up to giving us the same great content she has always given us.

I don’t know much. I studied political science in college, but as I am fond of saying, I have slept since then. However, I remember the concept of political parties and how they are supposed to work. Every party polices themselves and I suppose that’s the main problem. Politics works in fairly simple and predictable ways. Parties have platforms and they use those platforms to govern their solutions to our problems. At least, those are the problems they identify as our problems. Conservatives have identified border security as a problem. Obviously, we can get into any number of discussions as to how true that actually is, but let’s keep things simple.

James Lankford (R-OK) helped broker a deal on immigration reform in the senate. It is about as conservative as any deal anyone could imagine, Remember, the senate is Democratic. There was no reason for the deal to be as conservative as it was except for the fact that Democrats want to make a deal. It included aide of Israel, Ukraine, and Gaza, but otherwise there was very little most Democrats would want. Obviously, the House is more conservative in the Senate. It is where the so-called Freedom Caucus lives. They could take the bill and delete things they don’t like and add things they would like, but they have chosen to kill it instead. Why? Their fearless leader has told them to do so. We can’t solve our nation’s problems because if we solve those problems then we can’t campaign on them.

It is what happened next that kills me. The Oklahoma GOP voted to censure Lankford On the one hand, that means virtually nothing. A censure has all the weight of Barney Fife yelling stop in downtown Mayberry. It is the story it tells to all of us and their party members. He helped negotiate a deal and it was a favorable one to them. He is essentially being punished for governing. You may not like the deal he made. I get that. In that case you either simply vote no or you get involved and make the changes you think you need to be made. We don’t punish and scold people for governing. At least we don’t if we are a functional political party.

This is a good news and bad news kind of thing. We won’t have a deal on immigration. From the Democratic side, we can say at least we won’t have a bad deal. On the bad side, it means we will hear all kinds of crap about open borders, catch and release, fentanyl, and terrorists flooding over the board. It is all Brandon’s fault. We know better and we hopefully can get most voters to know that. Even if they believe the malarkey about the border being the wild west, they can at least get the idea that the Republicans killed their own bill. They would rather have a problem to point to than solve it. This is not how things are supposed to work, but then again I have slept since my political science classes.

The Texas State Republican executive committee voted on Saturday to censure outgoing speaker Joe Strauss for standing up for human and equal rights.  Hard right goons were very frustrated last session when Strauss stood in the way of Patrick’s asinine Bathroom Bill and other bills that did nothing to help anyone but homophobic white supremacists.  More amazing?  The censure vote took a 2/3rds majority to pass, and they got it.  One of those opposing the censure vote was Michael McCloskey of Cedar Park who said, “The Republican Party of Texas has changed into something most mainstream Republicans would not recognize.”

That statement wins the day for the most understatement.