Greg Abbott And His Very Serious White Folks Show
At least it was until Beto O'Rourke crashed the party
One of the problems with the Republican response to mass shootings like the one in Uvalde, TX, is that the Texas GOP has the choreography down pat. First, They surround Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick with a platoon of Very Serious White People. Second, Gov. Abbott says a bunch of Very Serious Words. Then, the Very Serious White People behind Gov. Abbott nod gravely, as if the Governor’s words have touched a deep well of emotion.
Then, once this tightly-scripted performance is complete, the Governor may or may not take questions from the assembled press, whose questions revolve around one topic: Why has the Governor not done more to prevent such tragedies?
At this point, the Governor reverts to his well-rehearsed song and dance about criminals not respecting gun laws (and the new bogeyman, mental illness). Then he’ll ask (rhetorically) what good it would do to pass gun control laws that would only impact the constitutional rights of good, God-fearing Texans.
At this point, the assembled press may but probably won’t ask the Governor why he slashed $211 million from the state’s mental health care budget if he’s so convinced that mental illness presents such a serious public safety problem.
To alert the press he’s had enough, he’ll mouth a few meaningless platitudes about sympathy for the bereaved parents. Then he’ll probably head off to a campaign fundraiser, as he did after Tuesday’s massacre. Hey, he’s got an election to win, don’tchaknow??
Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke decided to crash the party and change the script. Wednesday’s dog-and-pony show featuring Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Patrick was meant to follow the usual script, but O’Rourke was having none of it.
And the chaos was fun while it lasted.
As Abbott finished his remarks and introduced Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R), O’Rourke approached the stage to interrupt. His initial remarks were drowned out by crosstalk from different attendees ― some cheering him and many others jeering.
O’Rourke made a clear comment directed at Abbott while law enforcement moved to escort him out.
“This is on you,” O’Rourke said. “Until you choose to do something different, this will continue to happen. Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state or they will continue to be killed just like they were killed in Uvalde yesterday.”
Sure, O’Rourke didn’t follow “accepted” protocol, but that was the point of his crashing Abbott’s dog-and-pony show. He wanted to make a point that he knew no one on the stage would have the courage to take action.
And so he took it upon himself to throw a spanner into the carefully scripted proceedings..
The best that someone standing near O’Rourke was this attempt at a cheap personal insult: “This is propaganda, bro. Get out of here. You’re trash, man.”
Swing and a miss, eh?
As O’Rourke exited, some of his supporters chanted, “Let him speak!” One person asked, “How about the First Amendment?”
After O’Rourke left, the Republican elected officials at the dais criticized him with varying degrees of subtlety.
“There will be plenty of time to discuss and analyze what happened yesterday,” Patrick said.
Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) concurred. “Now is not the time to politicize pain and suffering,” he said.
Now is not the time to “politicize” pain and suffering? If you’re a Republican, now is the time to put it all in a box and lock it away to ensure that it will never be discussed. How is that not “politicizing” pain and suffering? It’s just the Republican version of doing precisely what they’re blaming Democrats for.
Josef Goebbels would be SO proud.
Phelan is saying that it’s acceptable for Republicans to politicize the pain and suffering created in the wake of a mass shooting. Democrats, however, don’t have the right to talk about it. Ever.
If that’s not the worst sort of politicization, I can’t imagine what would be.
Oh, as to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s characterization of O’Rourke’s action as an “outburst,” that’s only that because it was inconvenient to him and interfered with Gov. Abbott’s tightly choreographed dog-and-pony show. Patrick can pretend to take the high road, but the truth is that his job was to help ensure that nothing changed.
Could Beto O’Rourke have chosen a different tactic? Of course, but he recognized the script that Abbott’s farcical news conference was supposed to follow. He’d seen it several times before, and he didn’t want to see the memory of 19 children and two teachers dishonored in the way so many others had been before.
If nothing else, O’Rourke threw sand into the gears of Abbott’s carefully scripted performance. And he exposed the Emperor as having no clothes. When the best they could do is resort to calling him names, you know that O’Rourke made an impact. The question, of course, will be if he made a similar impression on the people of Texas, who tend to be among the most politically uninvolved in the country.
Texans aren’t used to rhetorical bomb throwers. The Lone Star State doesn’t have a history of politicians willing to rock the boat like Beto O’Rourke has been and will continue to. Whether or not that will make a difference in his race against an incumbent Governor who’s a gifted fundraiser is difficult to know. In a state that would vote for a ham sandwich as long as it has an “R” behind its name, Beto O’Rourke has an uphill battle ahead of him.
Wednesday’s press conference was just another instance of O’Rourke showing that he’s willing to keep pushing that rock up the hill.
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"Republican lawmakers, who have long resisted measures to expand background checks or limit access to guns, aimed to put a spotlight on the role of social media in the Texas shooting on Thursday. "The common theme of almost all of these mass shootings is the social alienation of sick young men, often fueled by social media," tweeted Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. He did not mention gun access in the post.
Tech industry officials pushed back, warning that such tweets could distract from broader policy questions about gun control.
"Some people will try to make it about Facebook so that it's not about guns," tweeted Brian Fishman, former director of counterterrorism, dangerous organizations and content policy at Facebook. "Don't let them.""
- https://www.yahoo.com/news/young-gunmen-turn-toward-social-201034987.html