The Texas GOP just lost its iron grip on the state, and the resulting coping mechanisms are nothing short of spectacular. Down in Austin, a politically inclined mega-church had to break out the tissue boxes as congregants wept on the floor over Attorney General Ken Paxton losing his seat to a Democrat. The church’s pastor even urged his flock to resist the “demonic forces” behind the election results. Meanwhile, out in East Texas, conservative California transplants who moved here to escape “socialists” are absolutely flabbergasted that the blue wave followed them all the way to their local diner. It’s a full-on identity crisis, complete with local Republican chairs blaming their staggering losses on everything from poor candidate quality to voters not properly factoring in the threat of a nuclear bomb.
On the flip side, Texas Democrats are drunk on their shiny new majority and have hit the ground running for the 2027 legislative session with a wishlist so ambitious it could double as a CVS receipt. They are proposing bills to expand Medicaid, legalize marijuana, raise the minimum wage up to $17 an hour, and completely gut the GOP’s recently minted school voucher program. They’re even coming for the tech industry, filing bills to kill the billion-dollar sales tax exemptions that have been luring massive, power-hungry data centers to the state.
But the absolute peak comedy of this political whiplash is the sudden, miraculous resurrection of “local control”. For years, the GOP-led state government treated blue Texas cities like rebellious teenagers, passing sweeping “Death Star” legislation to ruthlessly strip local officials of their power to do things like ban fracking, mandate water breaks for construction workers, or regulate payday loans. Now that Democrats hold the keys to the governor’s mansion and the state House, Republican mayors are frantically pivoting to a collaborative tone, preaching the gospel of “partnership” and hoping the state will kindly help foot the bill for their school police.
Isn’t it fascinating how “tyrannical government overreach” magically transforms into a “collaborative state partnership” the exact second your side is the one getting kicked out of office?
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