HOUSTON – The Texas Republican Party has controlled every lever of state government since 2003 and won significant votes last year in terms of voting, redistribution, abortion, school curricula and other long-term priorities. Delegates at the party convention this week expressed confidence that their party would at least re-enter the U.S. House of Representatives this November, and said the end of abortions in Texas was near clear. But the mood was not festive. The Texas Tribune spoke to more than 25 attendees who described feeling besieged by an increasingly anti-family and anti-Christian culture. Above all, attendees said they were bored. Bored with elections that they think are full of fraud. They are fed up with their own politicians – including US Senator John Cornyn, who has been accused of taking part in bipartisan arms law talks – for being open to compromises with Democrats. We are tired of persecuting Christians with traditional values. We are bored with a trusted mainstream media that broadcasts liberal talk points and despises anyone who disagrees as a racist or bigot. We are tired of undocumented immigrants, even those fleeing war and poverty, because they are benefiting from public benefits. They are tired of educating their children, especially on history and race. We got bored with the experts, starting with Dr. Alfred Kinsey, who was said to “sexualize” students before they reached adolescence. “The enemy is coming in and trying to change our society, to change the very fabric of what made America great and they do it by going to children,” said Conny Moore, a 75-year-old retired pharmacist and pastor. Among the elected officials speaking at the conference, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz stole the show, receiving applause on Friday as he thundered against the “radical left” leading to a cultural attack. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz spoke at the Texas Republican convention in Houston on Friday. Contributor: Justin Rex for The Texas Tribune “They want to demolish the church,” he said. “They want to tear down our schools. They want to tear down our families. They want to destroy our faith. “They want to destroy our values.” Sid Miller, the state’s commissioner for agriculture, said the struggle for America was no longer even partisan. “The battlefield was between Republicans and Democrats,” he told a conference Saturday. “It simply came to our notice then. Now the battlefield has changed once again. We have to improvise, adapt and win to defeat our enemy. “This new battlefield, this new battlefield is between patriots and traitors.” This was a crowd familiar with The Great Replacement, the theory that immigrants are used to replace white, Native Americans, and The Great Reset, a supposedly global capitalist plan in Davos, Switzerland, to impose environmental and social goals. for the global economy and to limit what people can eat and own. Fox News did not come out much. One America Network and NewsMax seemed much more influential. Conspiracy theories abounded. Anne Meng, a middle-aged nurse practitioner at The Woodlands, said she believed the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde was “a government ploy” and “told police to resign”. (Police delays in dealing with gunman who killed 21 people have been widely criticized.) Tammy Lake, 52, who lives in another Houston suburb of Magnolia and is a senior sales engineer for a software company, said she believed Donald Trump would be rightfully re-elected “by the end of the year.” He did not specify how. The resolution, which states that Biden “was not legally elected” as a result of “substantial electoral fraud in key metropolitan areas” in five states — possibly Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — passed without substantial discussion. Trump’s baseless allegation of stolen elections continues to resonate with party supporters. Chris Corbett, 66, a member of the party’s legislative priorities committee, was attending his party’s sixth congress. He said the state party once revolved around limited government and free markets, but has become more culturally oriented, he said, as voters wake up to threats to their values. “We see a lot more cultural conservatism happening, it’s a little more populist,” said Corbett, who lives in Flower Mound and is a writer and researcher for public policy and nonprofit groups. Many of the cultural issues that attendees and speakers opposed were those of the LGBTQ community, especially trans people. Gov. Greg Abbott, who is seeking re-election in November, called on child care researchers to look at families who have allowed their children to seek gender-based care, including the use of adolescent inhibitors. But this was not an assembly enthusiastic about established knowledge. The crowd applauded Robin Armstrong, a Texas physician who has given patients unapproved treatments for COVID-19, including hydroxychloroquine. His platform describes homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle choice,” a view that has faded in much of America. The platform described gender discomfort as a rare mental illness, a position not supported by general psychiatrists or pediatricians. Goods for Sale at the Texas Republican Convention in Houston on Friday. Contributor: Justin Rex for The Texas Tribune Vincent Gallo, 60, who owns a small construction company in Denton, said Democrats and some Republicans are engaged in a “redefinition of reality” by accepting trans people and urging others to do the same. “This is being promoted to other people under the guise of diversity and inclusion,” Gallo said. Teaching critical theory of race, an academic approach to the study of racial inequality, was also a major concern among attendees. “The whole beginning of what you are teaching is a conspiracy to put our people against each other and emphasize the wrong things,” said Moore, a retired Burger man. Throughout the week, attendees gathered for sessions focused on these cultural issues. One was entitled “Threats to families – Institutional policies that negatively affect children and families – What follows”. Another was called “Defeat the critical theory, Marxism and the sexualization of our children.” Attendees were also concerned about their views on electoral integrity. Many said that personal, watermarked, hand-counted, sequentially numbered ballots were the only reliable way to conduct elections (although representatives themselves used Scantron ballots to vote on the platform boards and the results will not be known). days until the counting of ballots in Austin). The conference included three screenings of “2000 Mules,” a film based on discredited evidence that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election. On Friday, Gov. Dan Patrick said his priority when the legislature returns next year is to “restore the illegal vote from a Class A misdemeanor to a felony.” Attorney General Ken Paxton also defended his lawsuit challenging the election results in four states that voted for Biden. The US Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit for lack of legitimacy. “We did not win,” Paxton acknowledged on Friday. “People still hate us for what we did. But I can tell you what. “If I had to do it again from the beginning, I would do it exactly as we did.” Paxton’s comments were met with applause from the crowd – a reflection of how much the party’s loyalists value their leaders who fight for them, even if the results do not go their way. “Candidates, you have to do your job and your promise is to serve the people, not your agenda,” said Gary Hulsey, a 68-year-old Haslet engineer. Not everyone supported the extreme partisanship that is being displayed. “Trying to find a bipartisan audience within the party is his right,” Patricia Almond, 57, a Porter retiree, told Cornyn. “As Republican voters, we also have freedom of speech, but it does nothing to unite the party.” One spokesman, David Gebhart, urged against a plank that characterizes homosexuality as a divergent lifestyle choice. “We are the Texas Republican Party, not the Westboro Baptist Church,” he said. His move was rejected. Another spokesman, Robert Bartlemay, challenged the resolution declaring Biden’s victory illegal, saying the GOP should look ahead and focus on electing a Republican president in 2024. People around him also disapproved. There has been unrest over the decision to ban Republicans Log Cabin, a LGBT political organization, from the showroom again, a decision criticized by Donald Trump Jr. on the Internet. (Republicans Log Cabin hosted a three-hour reception on Friday …
