Editor’s Notice: Dean Obeidallah, a former legal professional, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s every day program “The Dean Obeidallah Present” and a columnist for The Each day Beast. Comply with him @DeanObeidallah. The opinions expressed on this commentary are his personal. View extra opinion on CNN.
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Disturbing video from the Texas Republican Conference this weekend reveals convention-goers mocking GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw – a Navy SEAL veteran who misplaced his proper eye to a bomb in Afghanistan – with the time period “eye patch McCain.”
Fox Information’ Tucker Carlson coined the derisive nickname after the Texas lawmaker dared to precise help for beleaguered Ukraine following Russia’s barbaric assault on it.
However apparently much more heinous within the eyes of some attendees is that Crenshaw rejected former President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen. One man sporting a purple “Make America Nice Once more” hat might be seen yelling in a web based video, “Dan Crenshaw is a traitor!” and “He must be hung for treason!”
As despicable because the habits towards Crenshaw was, much more alarming had been the actions taken by the Texas GOP and the conference’s 5,000-plus delegates.
The gathering rejected the end result of a democratic election, supported bigotry towards the LGBTQ group and imposed far-right non secular beliefs on others by looking for to have them enshrined into regulation. And that wasn’t half of it.
Actually, the conference confirmed us one factor: Texas Republicans are not hiding their extremism. As a substitute, they’re brazenly embracing it.
Even earlier than the opening gavel, they gave us a glimpse of the occasion’s extremism within the Lone Star State by banning the Log Cabin Republicans from organising a sales space on the conference.
Texas Republican Occasion Chairman Matt Rinaldi solid the deciding vote on the transfer to bar the group that has advocated for LGBTQ Republicans for many years. “I feel it’s inappropriate given the state of our nation proper now for us to play sexual id politics,” Rinaldi informed the Fort Price Star-Telegram.
As soon as it formally acquired underway, the conference took numerous appalling and un-American actions. First, delegates accepted a measure declaring that President Joe Biden “was not legitimately elected.” In brief, the Texas GOP – like Trump himself – is embracing a lie as a result of it’s sad with the election outcomes. Put extra bluntly, the Texas GOP voted to reject American democracy.
Republican delegates additionally booed John Cornyn, the senior US senator from Texas, on the conference Friday due to the Republican lawmaker’s position main negotiations to achieve a Senate deal on a invoice to stem gun violence. These legislative efforts observe final month’s horrific taking pictures that claimed the lives of 19 schoolchildren and two academics in Uvalde, Texas.
The platform accepted on the conference referred to as for repealing or nullifying gun legal guidelines already in place, such because the Gun Management Act of 1968, which prevents felons and different harmful folks from having the ability to buy a gun legally. Apparently, the Texas GOP believes that even harmful folks ought to have a constitutionally protected proper to purchase a gun.
The Texas GOP platform additionally embraced ramping up anti-abortion rhetoric in public faculties. For instance, the platform states that “Texas college students ought to study concerning the Humanity of the Preborn Baby, together with … that life begins at fertilization.” It even seeks to power college students to observe “a stay ultrasound” and for high-schoolers to learn an anti-abortion booklet that critics say “consists of scientifically unsupported claims and shames girls looking for abortion care,” in keeping with The Texas Tribune.
It sounds just like the curriculum that you just would possibly discover in a theocratic authorities such because the Taliban – not one in the US funded by taxpayer {dollars}. However the GOP in massive swaths of this nation is not hesitant to help legal guidelines to impose its non secular beliefs – as we see with measures some Republicans champion that may completely ban abortion. The GOP conference’s doc moreover urges officers “to not infringe on Texas college college students’ and staffs’ rights to wish and interact in non secular speech.”
The Texas GOP platform additionally does its greatest to demonize these within the transgender group. It describes transgender folks as affected by “a real and very uncommon psychological well being situation.” And it sees sexual reassignment surgical procedure as a type of medical malpractice.
The platform takes intention at homosexual Individuals as properly with the assertion that homosexuality is “an irregular way of life selection.” Instructively, the Texas GOP platform didn’t embrace such language in 2018 and 2020.
This platform provides us a glimpse into the views of the Republican base on key points that in flip will stress GOP elected officers in Texas – and presumably past the state – to undertake equally excessive positions or run the chance of a main problem from an much more excessive Republican.
What induced this transfer to the far proper? Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist on the College of Houston, informed The Texas Tribune concerning the state GOP’s new excessive platform, “Donald Trump radicalized the occasion and accelerated the calls for from the bottom.” He added alarmingly, “There merely aren’t limits now on what the bottom would possibly ask for.”
I agree – partially. I don’t suppose Trump radicalized the bottom – relatively he merely gave folks permission to be who they all the time needed to be.
However I agree with Rottinghaus that there are actually no limits for what the GOP base would possibly search – be it rejecting election outcomes it doesn’t agree with to enacting extra legal guidelines based mostly on excessive non secular beliefs. And that ought to deeply alarm each American who desires to stay in a democratic republic.