This is not politics as usual. It's secessionist provocation as Texas operates outside of our political system and outside the law.
Unwilling to accept the rule of law or election results they do not like, it looks as if Republicans have every intention of provoking a winner take all crisis.
Texas has defied the Supreme Court, broken the laws passed by Congress and told the Executive Branch it has no ability to carry out its functions in the state. Armed national guard troops from Texas are being augmented as I write by troops from other red states. This wholly manufactured crisis is the result of a radicalized right wing whose toxic jingoism has created an irresistible energy on the right to champion division and demand domination.
The supposed proximate cause of the crisis is chaos along the border. But before that it was abortion, or CRT, or gays, or guns. The supposed issues are not real, the radicalization is itself the cause and the supposed issue only the vehicle.
It is not clear that the MAGA folks see the precipice for what it is. Instead, unwilling to accept the rule of law or election results they do not like, it looks as if they have every intention of provoking a winner take all crisis.
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We know now that they have no interest in negotiating a solution to the border crisis. In fact Republicans and Democrats did just that, and produced a bill that gave conservatives more than could ever have expected. Instead of accepting the victory, Donald Trump and the MAGA crowd walked away.
Some people have said this is just politics. They say the Republicans don’t want to give Joe Biden any win on the border, so they will not pass any new legislation while he is in office. (This isn’t new. We all remember Republicans refusing to vote on a Supreme Court nominee when Obama was in office.) I don’t buy it. This is not politics, it is the antithesis of politics. In politics, the people of a nation figure out how to work through their differences through lawful means. Governor Abbot has rejected the rule of law and is using military force to keep the US government from enforcing the law.
Texas is now posing the kind of challenge many weak governments face around the globe. In these places the government does not actually control all of the land in the country but exists in a kind of parity with armed militias who have their own turf. It is a real challenge, but the United States of America will not be a nation that cannot govern its own territory because local war lords stand in the way.
I am not smart enough to know how best to respond to this secessionist provocation. If it were up to me I would federalize the national guard and send them home. But there are all kinds of reasons why that might make things worse, including if the Texas national guard refuses to follow their orders. If it were up to me, I would relocate every one of the fifteen US military bases out of Texas for the duration of the crisis. Doing so would demonstrate to Texans that their actions have consequences. If it were up to me, the United States Senate would expel the representatives of Texas until such a time as the state recognizes it is part of a union.
Fortunately for the country, the response is going to come from Joe Biden and not from me. I trust that Joe’s good sense and his strong team to weight all the options. It won’t be easy.
Texas has chosen to operate outside of our political system and outside the law. The politics of hate and division, the ever escalating rhetoric, and a party leader who puts himself ahead of our country created this moment. The rest of us will have to resolve it.