Monday, February 6th, was the deadline for a Texas Redistricting agreement to be made in order to have a one 2012 Primary Election in Texas on April 3rd. There was an agreement made between Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and some of the minority groups who are plaintiffs in the Redistricting Lawsuit, but then a Federal US District Judge, Orlando Garcia, in San Antonio struck down the deal. Yep, this is the same Judge who is the brother in law of liberal Democrat State Senator Leticia Van De Putte. Van De Putte seems to have a history of unethically meddling in the affairs of courts and other departments like when she allegedly tried to influence a probation department’s decisions in order to help a family member. Orlando Garcia is also one of the judges whose radical redrawing of the Texas maps earned him a rejection and a scolding from the US Supreme Court.
Now, because this judge rejected the agreement, there will not be a unified April 3rd Primary election, and the chances are very slim of coming up with a new agreement in time to have a unified April 17th Primary. Right now it is most likely that Texas will have two primary elections.
Texas Will Likely Have Two Texas Primary Elections, One in mid-April and One After the Redistricting Battle
December 10th, 2011, I wrote an article stating that Texas will likely have 2 Primary elections. In fact, I said that Texas SHOULD go ahead and have 2 Primary elections. One on March 3rd and one at a later time after Redistricting is sorted out. This would allow Texas the ability to get some of the elections out of the way, have a State Republican Convention, and also have an early say in the Presidential Primary. Yes this would cost Texas some money, but getting to vote is something worth spending money on, and I knew that the Democrats and the Courts would drag this out longer than we ever expected. Turns out that they did drag things out and now we are back to square one again and we are looking at having to split the primary election up again. So we are going to have to still pay for a split primary election except now our vote in the Presidential Primary will be much later.
Texas Must Stand Up Against Unconstitutional Actions of Judges and Federal Government
This kind of mess is what happens when a couple of biased Judges think they have the ability to disregard the constitution and try to draw the maps themselves instead of the ELECTED officials in Texas drawing them.
This is also the kind of mess that happens when Republicans in Texas do not stand up together and fight back. Remember the TSA bill in Texas that would have made it illegal for TSA agents to molest people without cause? Remember how, instead of passing the TSA No-Groping bill, the Texas Legislature backed down when the DOJ told them to back down? That kind of playing nice is what got us into this mess where Texas just gets run over. We knew the Democrats were going to fight us in Redistricting no matter what we did. We knew they were going to sue in the name of minorities even though they do not care about minorities and only care about keeping Democrats in office. Democrats do not even represent the values of Minorities because most minorities are actually conservative and certainly not liberal. Instead of trying to play nice with the Democrats in Redistricting, only to have the Democrats still sue us, we should have really stuck it to the Democrats in Redistricting. From the beginning, we should have been the ones pulling out all the tricks from our hat because you know that if the Democrats were in power they would have done the SAME thing. Playing nice is good in general but it does not get us anywhere in these situations. We are in charge and we should do everything we can to pass our agenda items and stand up for our values. Things like requiring a 2/3rds majority in the State Senate in order to pass anything and Dewhurst and Straus putting so many Democrats or moderate Republicans into Chairmanship positions (to try to be proportional) prevents the Republican Majority from passing important bills because we want to play nice with the Democrats. At least put conservative Democrats in these Chairmanships that are given to the Democrats!
The people of Texas elected Republicans to pass Republican bills, not to compromise with the Dems. The Dems have a chance to vote against a bill when it gets to the floor for a vote and that should be it. We should be civil with them of course as people and we should work with them on issues we agree on, but we need to tell them “heck no” when it comes to compromising our Republican values in legislation on important issues. We are squandering away a majority. You know if the Democrats had the majority they would not think about playing nice at all. Remember when the Democrats left the State in order to keep a bill from getting passed? Right now they are not playing nice and they are intentionally pushing back this election so that Texas Republicans do not have a voice in the Republican Presidential race. Look at President Obama and the Democrats in Congress. They shoved liberalism, DADT repeal, ObamaCare, Etc. down our throats when they were in power, but when Republicans were in power we were too worried about compromise to get anything significant done. Don’t get me wrong, Texas has many great Republicans who stand up for Conservative Republican values, like Black East Texas State Representative James White, but not all Republicans stand together to promote conservative values. The Texas Legislature did pass many conservative bills last session, but given the super majority that Republicans had, there were not nearly as many conservative bills passed that should have and some important bills were killed. We might not have that super-majority ever again if the Democrats have their way in this redistricting battle.
Regardless of how the courts rule, Texas needs to take up Redistricting again in the next Legislative Session and fight back against this unconstitutional take-over of the right of Texas to draw maps within the State of Texas. The 2012 Republican Primary Election Ballot will actually have a proposition asking if Texas should take up redistricting again in 2013. I think the Republicans in Texas will vote overwhelmingly in favor of that proposition.
We also need to stand up against section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because it is unconstitutional. Instead of going to the Supreme Court with Section 5 on the back burner and simply hoping that they strike it down, we need to bring Section 5 to the front of the argument and be loud and fight against it. We need to rally with all the other states and get the Supreme Court to fast track a decision or at least try to write legislation that removed this unconstitutional section of the Voting Rights Act. We all know that it is unconstitutional to have one set of procedures for some states and a different set of procedure for other states. I mean seriously, the Department of Justice is telling Texas that they cannot pass a voter ID law even though the US Supreme Court already upheld a similar voter ID law in one of those other states who are special and do not need to get pre-clearance. That clearly shows why Section 5 is clearly unconstitutional. Section 5 says that an entire elected legislature might be biased so we are going to make all that state’s decisions pass though one person, a very biased and partisan Eric Holder. And isn't drawing the lines based solely on race inherently discriminatory and unconstitutional?
Texas Should Do like Florida and Stand Up to RNC
Texas also needs to stand up against the RNC. The Republican National Committee wants to control the candidates who become the Republican Nominee by allowing a few states to have their Primary elections before all the other states and penalizing any state who has their primary before these other states. The Media takes the front runner of these few states and basically declares who the winner will be even before most of the other states have voted. We need to have a more equal system in which All states can have a say in the Presidential race instead of a few states unfairly getting to go first. These few early states are not even good representations of America and certainly do not represent Texas. The Republican Party of each state does not even control when the Primary Date is anyways because the State Legislatures determine the election dates, at least in Texas that is how it works. Texas planned for a March 3 primary date. The Republican Party of Texas had no control over that date. The RNC was going to penalize the RPT because we have a winner take all and the Primary was going to be in March. We were forced to change from winner take all to proportional which diluted the voice of Texas and the ability of the entire state to be able to put all of our delegates behind one candidate who wins the majority of Texas.
Florida did it right! Florida told the RNC that they are having an early Primary and they don’t care about getting penalized. Florida had a HUGE say in the Presidential Primary Race this year because they decided to stand up against the unfair RNC rules. Sure, Florida will lose delegates, but they at least had a huge say in the Presidential Primary race! Texas should do the same.
