GOP Calls Convention Great Success
Despite Draconian Words and Actions

Capitol Inside
June 20, 2022

The Texas GOP served itself a glowing review on Monday for the state party convention that it staged in Houston last week - declaring that the event set the stage for a landslide at the ballot box this fall.

"It was a great success," the Republican Party of Texas said in email this afternoon. The RPT contended that the event had proven "yet again that the grassroots of our Republican Party is more fired up than ever before to KEEP TEXAS RED and SAVE AMERICA!"

The state party's portrayal of its first in-person convention in four years is in a different universe than the actual truth about the event that mainstream media and independent news sources chronicled as a cannibalistic dumpster fire. The new state GOP platform has made headlines from coast to coast - with provisions that transcend the bounds of radical with attacks on democracy, business, educators, public officials and the LGBTQ community amid obsessions with gender identity and conspiracies on the sexualization of children in Texas schools.

Governor Greg Abbott could see the handwriting on the wall when he chose to avoid a traditional speech to delegates so he could make a pitch for unity instead at a reception for his supporters on Thursday night across the street from the convention hall. Grassroots conservatives inside the George R. Brown Convention Center had been complaining throughout the day how the state's top leaders and lawmakers had abandoned them beyond their use of them as props for campaigns and yeomen's work at conventions.

But the governor's cameo appearance appeared to have its desired effect when the disgruntled activists at the GRB tried to boo U.S. Senator John Cornyn off the stage the most belligerent and revile demonstration of collective behavior at a major political event in Texas in modern times. Abbott knew he would get similar treatment if he'd had the gall to appear before several thousand delegates on the convention floor as governors always have done at their own party conventions. The disgruntled activists had forgotten about the governor by the following afternoon when they unleashed their wrath at Cornyn for his role in negotiations on a bipartisan gun measure after a mass school shooting in Uvalde last month.

No major Texas leader was immune from the delegates fury - as evidenced in confrontations that a delegate who's a social media conspiracist initiated with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Houston in the convention center outside the main meeting hall. A video surfaced on Twitter on Monday showed the instigator approach Cruz when he was seated at a table in the exhibit hall. After branding Crenshaw on Saturday as a globalist RINO, the heckling delegate shouted loudly that Cruz was a globalist coward.

Cruz had entered the convention as the number one darling of the far right in Texas - with Attorney General Ken Paxton and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick in the competition for that status as well. All three had received lukewarm welcomes from delegates in speeches to the convention on Friday. But the excitement, energy and team spirit that has been a staple of state party conventions was missing conspicuously at the GOP convention regardless of who was speaking.

The state GOP said the convention drew almost 10,000 delegates, alternates, sponsors and guests to the George R. Brown Convention Center - a number that appears to be dramatically exaggerated. The state party portrayed the event as a bonding of forces on the far right.

"The Democrats and the Fake News know the momentum is in Republicans’ favor," the state GOP said. "They saw the passion in the room at our convention, where conservative leaders received praise and applause for boldly standing up for our Constitutional rights. When Republicans fight for We the People, voters will always reward them at the ballot box."

Those are the kind of battle cries that have typically emerged from state political conventions on both sides of the aisle. But the characterization doesn't apply in the case of the Republicans' first in-person state convention in four years. The GOPs biennial gathering at the GRB unfolded more like a disheveled revolt against state leaders for abandoning the grassroots - a central theme on the convention floor.

Legions of disgruntled sought to take the party back with the crafting of a new state platform that transcends the bounds of radical and conservative - with provisions that declare the 2020 election illegitimate while advocating punishment for woke corporations, criminal fines for public officials based on job performance and bans on the sexualization of school children across the state. The platform classifies gender identity as a "genuine and extremely rare mental health condition" while referring to homosexuality as an "abnormal lifestyle choice."

more to come ...