“Those changes are fine with me because I want to facilitate the continued functioning of the Travis County Republican Party.  However, I will continue to hold the bully pulpit and continue to hold political criminals of both parties accountable.”

Rob Morrow – Incoming Chair of the Travis County GOP commenting on changes to reduce the role and power of County Chair.

Lord knows there are enough political criminals to keep Morrow busy.

From the Annals of the Defeated  – – – The Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy met for the first time.  According to the TDUDC, who are still referring to the Civil War as the “War Between the States”, their motto (on a five point star surrounding a cotton boll) is an ambitious “Love, Live, Pray, Think, Dare.”  The UDC was instrumental in the late 19th century  attempts to recharacterize the Civil War as not having been caused by slavery and in attempting to divert focus away from the rebellion that it was to a glorious cause dedicated to preserving a way of life that probably never really existed.

The Texas GOP platform is a thing of wonder – that is, it makes you wonder what planet these folks live on.  Charlie Pierce, one of Red’s favorites – listen to him on Only a Game on NPR – takes down the Texas GOP and takes them down hard.

Connoisseurs of American wingnuttery wait with great anticipation every four years for the release of the Texas Republican state platform. It is like Christmas morning. We wait for it the way America waited for that first cold beer on the evening of December 4, 1933. This is the real deal, the pure uncut hallucinogen of all American political ideology, the ultimate monster from the conservative Id. And this is not produced from some compound in Idaho. It is not stapled to a lamp post in downtown Coeur d’Alene. It is the official adopted philosophy of the Republican party in one of the most important states in the Union.

The New York Times recently published What Makes Texas Texas, and the article has received a lot of attention.  One Texan responds as follows:

I am a Texan. I was born in Texas and I grew up in Texas. I got my first pair of cowboy boots at the M. L. Leddy’s boot shop when I was 4.

I no longer live in Texas, and the Texas I read about and hear about does not seem like the Texas I knew. It does not seem like the Texas I keep close to my heart.

My Texas was the Texas of John Connally and Ann Richards. My Texas was the place where my grandfather, a windmill repairman and former ranch foreman, could wear a Stetson hat and cowboy boots and yet not believe in the death penalty or in the killing of animals for sport.

I am sad that I no longer recognize the Texas of today.

DAPHNE HAUBER

Killingworth, Conn.

Can he avoid finishing dead last in every primary tonight?   Pennsylvania appears to be his only chance at finishing a distant second to Trump.