Abbott and the Republicans Fear the Kraken
with Silence on Failed Trump Election Heist

List of Republicans Breaking with Trump Grows

Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside
December 2, 2020

Texas Republicans have gone invisible for the holidays in an apparent attempt to escape the fury of the Kraken that President Donald Trump's elite strike force legal team has promised to unleash in the sensational bid to overturn the 2020 general election.

The leviathan of the North Sea is the Trump diehard base in the frightened eyes of Governor Greg Abbott and the Republicans who'll be running the Texas House and Senate again in 2021.

But the Kraken is also emblematic of the most serious constitutional crisis in American history as the president who lost the election tries to salvage his power and title in a court challenge that's been raising the bar on lawsuit abuse to unfathomable levels.

GOP leaders and lawmakers appear to be doing their dead best now to make the statehouse their safe house next year by pretending that democracy in America hasn't been under attack in the past several weeks. Their incredible silence had been deafening in the midst of the fallen president's attempt to steal the election that he lost by every measure.

Abbott and the Republicans in the Legislature might respect the coronavirus when they convene in regular session on January 12. But they clearly fear the Kraken that Trump loyalists have been chanting for his crack legal team to release like presidential conspiracy masterminds Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani have been threatening to do.

The Republicans seem to think they won the Texas election simply because they didn't lose the state House majority at the polls last month like partisans on both sides had expected with a toxic president topping the GOP ticket. It's true that a tie in the battle for west wing control went to the ruling party as a product of an all-time status quo vote.

But the Republicans at the Texas Capitol could be doing long-term damage to their reputations by staying mum on the lame duck president's election invalidation crusade with the Kraken who remain loyal to him no matter what he says or does.

Abbott has an opportunity to show that he hasn't forgotten how to be a leader by going to the defense of counterparts like Governors Brian Kemp of Georgia and Doug Ducey of Arizona - a pair of Republicans who'd been true Trump believers before he turned on them in the past week.

As a former state attorney general and Texas Supreme Court judge who leads the nation's largest red state, Abbott would be the gold standard in credibility if he decided to speak out on the Arizona and Georgia governors who Trump has portrayed as traitors for failing to try to block the certification of Biden wins in their states.

Abbott could be a warrior for the truth if he publicy acknowledged that he would have taken the same exact actions that Ducey and Kemp took if the presidential race had been close in Texas with Biden as the victor. Abbott had worked with both on the Republicans Governors Association. The governors who've been depicted as Benedict Arnolds by Trump in Arizona and Georgia would owe Abbott a significant debt of gratitude if he backed them up for upholding the laws they took oaths to protect and defend.

Or the Texas governor who'd been a portrait in courage as a consequence of personal tragedy and tribulations that he's overcome could continue to be a vanishing violet whose number one priority has appeared to be avoiding the Kraken's wrath by having no position on the floundering Trump election heist.

Abbott has held his tongue on Trump attacks on Republican Governors Mike DeWine of Ohio and Larry Hogan of Maryland and a long list of other GOP officials for recognizing that Biden won.