Governor Greg Abbott wrapped up his convention speech in Houston by promising to “demolish” the opposition, promising a “larger than life surprise” to rally the troops. That surprise turned out to be Paige, a 9,000-pound African elephant hauled in from a sanctuary in Cut and Shoot, Texas. Draped in a banner reading “Unity Drives Victory,” the four-ton mammal celebrated the spirit of conservative togetherness by stopping dead in her tracks and unleashing a massive stream of urine directly onto the convention floor in front of hundreds of delegates and reporters. You really can’t script a more accurate metaphor for political theater than an absolute unit of a mammal relieving itself right next to the media section.
Speaking of expensive messes, Lubbock’s very own House Speaker, Dustin Burrows, made history by becoming the first sitting speaker to actually address the state convention. Did he get a hero’s welcome for helping pass more than 40 bills from the party’s right-wing wish list, including private school vouchers and transgender restroom restrictions? Of course not. The grassroots delegates immediately drowned him out in a chorus of boos because he originally teamed up with Democrats to secure his speaker gavel. It turns out that delivering an unprecedented avalanche of red-meat policy doesn’t mean much if you fail the purity test administered by people who spent their weekend hyperventilating over data centers.
The official slogan of the weekend was “Unity Drives Victory,” which the Texas GOP proved by promptly fracturing into a dozen petty civil wars. Despite Governor Abbott dumping an estimated $2 million into funding and subsidizing the event to make everyone play nice, the delegates used that financial cushion to completely oust their own party chair, Abraham George, replacing him with his vice chair, D’Rinda Randall, because George apparently wasn’t hostile enough to the establishment. Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick used his precious unity-building stage time to declare that the Democratic Senate nominee is “going to Hell, for sure” because of his interpretation of the Bible. Nothing screams “big tent party” quite like predicting eternal damnation for the guy across the aisle.
When they weren’t dodging elephant pee or backstabbing their leadership, the delegates stayed busy tweaking the party platform to ensure public schools explicitly teach that Sharia law is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and banning schools from serving halal food. Because if there’s one burning, existential crisis keeping the good people of Lubbock awake at night, it’s definitely the looming threat of public school cafeterias accidentally serving a well-seasoned chicken shawarma.
But hey, at least the convention hall sold out its exhibit space and brought back traditional corporate sponsors like CenterPoint Energy to help offset the party’s $100,000 budget deficit. At the end of the day, if you’re going to watch a multi-million dollar political machine descend into public infighting, xenophobic panic, and literal rivers of animal waste, you might as well have a major utility company foot the bill, right?
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