Greg Abbott is a ‘traitor’? Texas is a tyranny? The Texas GOP has a Hate Abbott Club
Gov. Greg Abbott is doing his best to save not only a state but also the Republican Party.
With Texas trending purple under an unsteady White House, Abbott can shelter downballot Republicans in November and keep his state from swinging the election to Democrat Joe Biden.
Yet a Texas Republican faction has been unmasked as the Hate Abbott Club.
“[Abbott] has shown us exactly who he is, a traitor to liberty and our constitution,” state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, wrote on Twitter Friday.
Just because barroom mingling and margaritas aren’t a safe combo right now?
And because Texans need to wear face coverings?
In a June 19 letter, Stickland and state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, called mask mandates “tyranny.”
(I wonder what they think about businesses requiring shoes or shirts.)
Even the Fort Worth Republican Women, once a moderate club but now using social media to promote an outlandish fringe conspiracy, seemed outraged that Republican county commissioners would require scarves, bandannas or masks.
“You need to call [Judge Glen Whitley],” the club posted on Facebook and Twitter, launching a phone and email campaign against Republican commissioners the name of “limited government, life and liberty.”
The club also published a tweet Friday tagging its support for the QAnon online conspiracy fantasy.
Abbott and Whitley are the kind of steady leaders who have kept Republicans in power in Tarrant County for 36 years and in Texas for 22.
Yet two top staffers of Empower Texans, a West Texas oil money PAC which spends heavily in Tarrant County elections, used their podcast outtakes June 18 to wisecrack about Abbott’s wheelchair use, call him vulgar names and use obscenities.
This is in a state where voters gave Abbott a 63% approval rating in a June 20-23 Fox News phone poll.
That’s 13 points better than President Donald J. Trump, sinking to a dead heat with Biden in the Fox News poll even though the 1,000 voters surveyed were 46%-40% Republicans.
Only Abbott’s money and mainstream support can help some Republicans win in close suburban Texas House races.
But I can almost hear him booed already three weeks before the party’s no-mask-required Houston state convention.
“We don’t like government overreach,” said the Tarrant County Republican Party chairman, Rick Barnes of Keller.
“When the government forces businesses to tell people they have to wear a mask — we’re going to be against that. I think our position is that we want people to remain safe, but we also want it to remain a personal decision,” he said.
The grumbling against one of the nation’s most popular governors is pointless, according to Southern Methodist University political science professor Matthew Wilson, an expert on religious conservatives in politics.
“He had a bit of a political cushion,” Wilson wrote by email.
“Also, the disgruntled, anti-mask, anti-restriction folks don’t really have an alternative to coalesce around.”
University of North Texas political science professor Kimi King predicted more pressure on Abbott as the coronavirus pandemic continues leading up to Trump’s Aug. 27 acceptance speech in Jacksonville, Fla.
She wrote by email that “there will be more heat, not less,” on Abbott.
“The governor at this point is in a no-win situation — he only supported local enforcement of masks because of the growing crisis in several counties.”
Abbott has been juggling life, death and Texas’ economy for four months, but not with perfect success.
He had to revise orders last week when Texas bars failed to follow his original orders limiting bars to table service only. Bars didn’t stick to that, and Abbott said Friday he wished he had opened them more slowly.
He’s changed messages frequently, and doesn’t want anyone jailed for violations. (That can produce more defiance than compliance.)
Cities like Colleyville are taking advantage of that, by refusing to enforce state-supported mask mandates. Mayor Richard Newton said the city won’t help because county prosecutors won’t enforce the $1,000 state fines.
University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus summed up Abbott’s challenge ahead:
“He needs to keep the party unified in an era where any flash political moment could tear the party apart ahead of what will be a very close election,” Rottinghaus wrote by email.
His own party isn’t making it easy.
This story was originally published June 27, 2020 at 4:33 PM.
