UT/Texas Tribune Poll Validates the Effectiveness of Texas GOP Propaganda

[TexasTowelie]

By Carol Morgan

I’m not surprised at all at the results of the new UT-Texas Tribune political poll, but you need to read it for yourself.

The overall take-away is that most Texans see the Federal Government as the enemy; 57 percent of Texans, to be exact. And I’m not shocked even one bit, given the fact that Texans have been repeatedly subjected to anti-Fed talking points since the Reagan era which gave way to 14 years’ worth of false propaganda and twisted facts from our former Governor.

Perry bluffed his way through more than a decade with half-truths about the Texas Miracle; claiming that there was an exodus of Americans to Texas that accounted for Texas’ population growth, when truthfully, it was due to Texans having babies.

And I didn’t see him rejecting stimulus funds either. As a matter of fact, the Guv accepted more stimulus funds than any other governor except the governors of California and New York. During the 2011 Texas wildfires, he happily accepted federal aid, to the tune of $23 million dollars and then lied about it. I didn’t see him turning down Federal funds for help with the rush of Hurricane Katrina survivors who fled to Texas, nor Hurricane Rita in 2005 or Ike in 2008.

When Governor Abbott served as Texas Attorney General, he spent over $65 million dollars of your money playing “who’ll-blink-first” with Washington. It wasn’t because he had a good reason; it was merely a continuation of a propaganda strategy that’s worked successfully for over 30 years.

And Texas has been paying for this high-priced duel ever since.

The Federal Government as bogeyman is nothing more than the tired overused trope of targeting a common enemy to knit the masses together out of fear. Conservative Texas politicians proudly equate themselves with Moses leading the herd out of the wilderness. It’s laughable, but the cheering crowds loved it.

If you’re familiar with history, the common enemy technique has been used repeatedly since the glory days of Rome. It was used in the Cold War and every preemptive strike, military initiative, or war since. The ISIS even uses it today against the West.

Unfortunately for us and fortunately for GOP politicians, it also distracts citizens from politically inconvenient issues and just like a common pickpocket, they use the colorful diversion to line their own pockets.

All the while, Texans devote their attentions to half-truths and trigger words like liberty, freedom, patriot, government overreach, socialism; not to mention religious references intended to serve as a kind of “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval”.

Texans should be dedicating their attentions to more complex and controversial events that highlight the unabated corruption within the Texas GOP and their agency appointees. It’s a betrayal of Texas citizens, but it goes completely unnoticed because it cannot be explained with the words "patriot" or "small government".

I put the blame solely on the citizens of Texas. They’ve swallowed this dumbest of dumb GOP conversation as if it were a tasty lunch and they’re asking for seconds.

Ask any Texan citizen about the 21CT corruption, $2100 desk chairs, outsourcing contracts with zero oversight, full tuition reimbursements for state employees, wrongdoing within the Texas Enterprise Fund, the CPRIT controversy of which Abbott was in charge, and the 2/3 Senate rule change that diluted your voice….I guarantee you'll be met with blank stares.

And it’s been a terrible, terrible fault within the Texas Democratic Party to let these things go unchallenged. What a missed opportunity! They should have taken hold of these crimes of the Texas GOP like a rabid pit bull and never let go. They should have been reminding Texans LOUDLY every day of the dishonesty of the Texas GOP. Texas Republicans should be feeling as if they've been beaten with a big Democratic baseball bat every. single. day.

Daron Shaw, a professor of government at UT-Austin and co-director of the UT/TT Poll had some very astute observations about this poll; voters don’t pay attention to the complex and detailed problems of governance until it’s an election year.

And that’s the crux of Texas’ voting problem. If Senator Cowboy Bob votes against local control of fracking during a legislative session, but uses “Give Back Local Control” as one of his campaign talking points next year and no one is paying attention...then they’ve failed to realize that Senator Cowboy Bob is an abject liar and probably in the back pocket of his energy donors.

People don’t pay attention until it’s time to vote, if then….Texans get all their political news as a part of a water cooler discussion or at some barbeque joint at lunch, or in a Twitter quip that’s less than 140 characters, then they pass around these murky epiphanies disguised as truth like the childhood game of gossip, the original message unrecognizable by the time it gets around the circle.

Always, always...nothing rooted in fact, no truth, but there’s plenty of dubious sources like Rush Limbaugh or that bastion of truthful journalism, Fox News. That’s IF they used sources at all.

People would be wise to remember Pericles, a wise and influential man in the Golden Age of Athens. Thousands of years ago, he remarked, “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.”

The Republican kingmakers probably know you better than you know yourself. That’s why their political manipulations are so deep and effective.

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Carol Morgan is a career/college counselor, writer, speaker, former Democratic candidate for the Texas House and the award-winning author of Of Tapestry, Time and Tears, a historical fiction about the 1947 Partition of India. Email Carol at [e-mail] , follow her on Twitter and on Facebook or visit her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org

http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/carol-morgan/2015-02-26/uttexas-tribune-poll-validates-effectiveness-texas-gop#.VPAH7C7y1Z8

This blog is post in its entirety with permission.

[elleng]

1. “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean

politics won't take an interest in you.”

FFS!

[Drunken Irishman]

2. Pull their federal funding.

That includes NASA.

[DhhD]

3. Abbott relies on Texans not paying attention to politics and continues laughing about his con-game

after telling the truth about California as he know that the, Eyes of Texas, are NOT upon him and other GOP Lying Politicians. California is now in Black Ink while Texas continues to sink further down in the Red Ink as revenue continues to drop with tax relief for the wealthy and oil revenue is played by campaign promises. Abbott-Sorry pick! Texans Republicans, even sorrier.

Left Coast Rising
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/opinion/paul-krugman-california-tax-left-coast-rising.html?_r=0
And there’s an even bigger if less drastic experiment under way in the opposite direction. California has long suffered from political paralysis, with budget rules that allowed an increasingly extreme Republican minority to hamstring a Democratic majority; when the state’s housing bubble burst, it plunged into fiscal crisis. In 2012, however, Democratic dominance finally became strong enough to overcome the paralysis, and Gov. Jerry Brown was able to push through a modestly liberal agenda of higher taxes, spending increases and a rise in the minimum wage. California also moved enthusiastically to implement Obamacare.

I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore. more at site source


Will Texas sink as far as Kansas? We have two years with the extremist Tea Party in place in the Texas Legislature, four more years of Abbott and his sidekicks to undermine the real values of Texans. Texans are waking up though.