Richard Parker posits that the extreme positions taken by Texas Tea Partisans make the movement openly hostile to big business.  The Texas Association of Business has come out against two of the Tea Party’s most cherished legislative goals – enshrining the right of religious bigots to discriminate based on their say-so and keeping undocumented kids as  poor and ignorant as possible.  The schism between the merely self-serving but more or less live and let live Country Club Republicans and the Tea Party extremists who want to fundamentally reshape the way you can live your life is growing.

Welcome to Texas, Toyota, and all the accountants, lawyers, contractors and other companies — big and small — that are making the long trek to relocate here. You will find Texas to be immensely friendly. We’re especially friendly to business, which is why you’re coming, of course. Hence, the outlook for Texas is bullish: It’s on track to supplant Germany as the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2050. Texas is so friendly to business that even Democrats stress the word pro-business before mumbling the word Democrat.

But there’s something the eager chambers of commerce and glad-handing mayors probably didn’t tell you before you made up your mind to come to Texas. There’s a political party emerging in Austin the likes of which we’ve never seen. Until recently known as the tea party, it’s the Anti-Business Party of Texas, and it’s about to open the door to a future of uncertainty that will affect your workers, worry your shareholders and befuddle your customers. If you saw the uproar from businesses — from Apple to American Airlines — in Indiana over a so-called religious freedom act, then brace yourself, because Texas could be next.

Two measures in the Legislature would unravel a law that seems to have worked well since 1999. State Sen. Donna Campbell and Rep. Matt Krause, both of the Anti-Business Party, propose to bar state or local governments from enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the event of a religious claim. They even want to enshrine the ban in the Texas Constitution. This would effectively gut anti-discrimination protections, particularly for gay people, in most cities. Campbell also is effectively trying to deny an affordable college education to the children of unauthorized immigrants.

The Houston Chronicle reports on the Tea Party’s legislative successes in Texas – a state where it rules the roost like in no other.  If you have any doubts about whether the Tea Party is running (some say ruining) this state, this article will disabuse you of that notion.   Only Joe Strauss and some House comrades stand in the way of ceding complete control of Texas to extreme conservatives.

Before 2009, the tea party was more like a tea brunch. The movement that has found such success in Texas, unlike arguably anywhere else in the country, brought its six years of work at the local level to Austin.

At a Wednesday rally at the Capitol, conveniently on Tax Day, the first-ever statewide gathering of local tea party groups took pride in their legislative gains that have remade Texas politics and have launched – and killed – many politicians’ careers.

Rep. Jonathan Stickland, the Bedford Republican who was introduced at the rally as “the No.1 conservative,” went on his usual tirade against House leadership. He seemed less of a legislator and more of a kingmaker as he introduced several new Republican lawmakers, mostly in the Senate, who have yanked the upper chamber to the right this session.

“This session, so far, has been filled with great things” in the Senate, Strickland said. “Conservative legislation is dying every single minute that ticks by.” There are about 47 days left in the legislative session before lawmakers go home until 2017, barring a Gov. Greg Abbott-called special session.