Proposed Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Republican Party of Texas delegates voted Saturday on a platform that called for new laws to require the Bible to be taught in public schools and a constitutional amendment that would require statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties.

Other proposed planks of the 50-page platform included proclamations that “abortion is not healthcare it is homicide”; that gender-transition treatment for children is “child abuse”; calls to reverse recent name changes to military bases and “publicly honor the southern heroes”; support for declaring gold and silver as legal tender; and demands that the U.S. government disclose “all pertinent information and knowledge” of UFOs.

The party hopes to finalize its platform on Wednesday, after Saturday’s votes on each proposal are tabulated.

Passed by delegates at the party’s biennial convention, the platform has traditionally been seen not as a definitive list of Republican stances, but a compromise document that represents the interests of the party’s various business, activist and social conservative factions. But in recent years — and amid a party civil war that’s pushed it further right — the platform has been increasingly used as a basis for censuring Republican officeholders who the party’s far right has attacked as insufficiently conservative, including Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, and U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez, R-San Antonio.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/proposed-texas-gop-platform-calls-234215756.html

The Texas tealiban.

[keithbvadu2]

1. "to require the Bible to be taught in public schools"

They have no qualms about using the gov't to foist their own religious beliefs on the children in public schools without letting the parents decide how they want their children raised.

[viva la]

2. They are just nuts. Boiling over with crazy.

[jmowreader]

3. This could turn out REALLY bad for them

"Children, turn in your Bible to Genesis 2 and read along with me."

(They read the story of Adam and Eve.)

"What can we learn from this chapter?"

"God is a complete dumbass."

"How so, Little Rotten Johnny?"

"Think about it, Mrs. Smith. God started out by making male and female versions of all the lower animals out of dust. And he made a lot of each species. But when he got to humans, he only made one and it was a male. This could have caused problems if the one he made decided to get drunk and walk off a cliff in the middle of the night or something, and it did cause problems because people don't reproduce by dividing like amoebas do. You'd think that he would have started out making a bunch of people of both sexes but he didn't. And when he decided he needed a woman - like that wasn't already obvious - he had to cut up the man to get the parts to make the woman from. I don't think he ran out of dust between making the man and making the woman. So...what the fuck?"

"Johnny, that was the most lucid thing I ever heard from you."

"I'm sorry, but this book is bizarre enough as it is."

[DET]

4. What's With the UFOs?

Something new to shoot at - besides their own kids? Potential recruits to their wingnut religious beliefs? If ETs want to make contact with intelligent life on this planet, they should steer clear of Texas.

[B.See]

5. The South shall REICH again

[DFW]

6. Texas Republicans: 20th century?

"WHAT 20th century? When did the 19th century ever end?"

[Karadeniz]

7. The Synoptics would be good as part of a course to understand the powers of

the Mind. Unfortunately, no one understands them, so that's out.

[NanaCat]

8. LOL They won't like how that turns out.

The best way to create an atheist is to have someone read that flaming pile of bilge known as the bible. All of it.

Probably the #1 conversion tool out there.

[Volaris]

9. Gold, silver AND FUCKING UFO's hahahahaha...

How can even these people take themselves seriously; at some level, even they have to know how fucking lunatic they sound.

[Wounded Bear]

10. Hmmm, requiring 'majorities in a majority of counties' sounds like an 'electoral college' move...

a way that would lead to minority rule.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

11. Why the new platform from the Republican Party of Texas matters

Texas GOP platforms are often ridiculous, but the new installment touts a model that would effectively prevent Democrats from winning statewide elections.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/new-platform-republican-party-texas-matters-rcna154262

The latest installment is no exception. The Texas Tribune reported over the holiday weekend on state GOP delegates voting on a platform with all sorts of notable ideas, ranging to demanding Bible classes in public schools to seeking UFO information to calling for U.S. military bases to be named after Confederate leaders who took up arms against the United States.

But The Texas Tribune also highlighted one of the state Republican Party’s newer priorities.

Perhaps the most consequential plank [in the platform] calls for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win an election, a model similar to the U.S. electoral college. Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office.

It’s been a few decades since a Democratic candidate won statewide office in Texas, and with that in mind, it’s tempting to think Republican officials would be satisfied with the state’s electoral system as it currently exists......

And that's where this newly proposed county-based requirement would kick in, shifting power away from voters in order to ensure Republican rule. As historian Kevin Kruse explained:

If Texas Republicans embrace this return to a county-unit type of system, they’ll actually have created something even more unequal than the scheme concocted by segregationists of a century ago. Harris County, the home of Houston, has a population of 4.7 million, while Loving County has a total population of 64. Harris County has a sizable black population, while Loving is (as far as I can tell) entirely white. But one vote in Loving would mean more than 70,000 votes in Harris.

Kruse added, “It’s staggeringly unequal, and silencing an ‘urban’ vote that is of course now not just coded as more liberal but racially diverse too. And that, of course, is the point.”

This is, in other words, the latest example of Republicans looking at democracy as something that needs to be rigged, rather than a system that needs to be preserved.

Texas is becoming more urban and democratic. This plan is designed to disenfranchise democratic voters in large urban areas such as Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Ft. Worth. This plan shows how scared the Texas GOP is of the demographic trends that show that Texas is turning blue

[lindysalsagal]

12. Prepare them to be 4th century sheep herders.

Apparently, that's their biblical goal.