GOP May Regret New Election Law
after Trump Praise for Communists

Capitol Inside
February 24, 2022

Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller portrayed himself in 2020 as a modern-day Paul Revere who was crisscrossing the state to sound the alarm on a Bolshevik revolution that had begun in America with Texas as an imminent destination

"We must all WAKE UP and realize what is happening," Miller declared in an email call to arms for supporters who were proud Texans and Americans like himself. "If the Democrats win and the Marxist mob takes control of our government ... it's game over for liberty."

Miller's sensational words of caution appear to be a case of mistaken identify in hindsight in the wake of Donald Trump's gushing praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin's handling of the war that his country declared against the democratic nation of Ukraine on Wednesday night.

After touting himself as Trump's "man in Texas" for several years, Miller could among the Texas Republicans who have the most to fear after the former president's hailing of Putin as a genius for the tactics that he employed as a springboard for the attack on the much smaller country across its southern border.

Trump's top Texas allies like Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton could finds their odds in bids for third terms falling like bombs on Ukraine in re-election campaigns with endorsements from the ex-American president as the centerpiece.

But every Republican in competitive general election races could be casualties of the war in Ukraine with the almost unbelievable opportunity that Trump has given Texas Democrats to make the general election a referendum on communism versus democracy.

Texas Republican lawmakers have substantial cause for alarm after failing to breaks ranks with Trump in the aftermath of the insurrection that he and his allies orchestrated at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in a failed attempt to block the certification of Democratic President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 general election.

GOP legislators could be worried that they may have handed Texas House and Senate majorities to the Democrats on a silver platter with their votes last year for an election integrity bill that effectively limited democracy in the Lone Star State with a slew of new restrictions on voting here. The Republicans in Austin could find it difficult to distance themselves from Trump barring dramatic and immediate action like votes to cancel the new Texas law in an emergency special session.

In a political climate that's never been as unpredictable as it's become since Trump's final year in the White House, it's conceivable that the Republicans' march in lockstep with the ex-president may have no effect whatsoever on their re-election campaigns in 2022. The Republicans might find a distraction from their ties to Trump when they express outrage with Biden's handling of the crisis in Ukraine regardless of whatever action the U.S. ends up taking there.

Trump loyalists in Texas and beyond could decide that their criticism of the current American president in America could do more harm than good by drawing attention to their support for the loser of the 2020 election. But the Republicans who justified the state's new election law on Trump's lies about the election being stolen could find that there's no turning back in light of the praise that he's heaped on the communist leader in Russia this week.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke might feel compelled to make the Texas power grid collapse in the deadly freeze a year ago as a distant second on his priority list in light of Trump's siding with the communists in Russia vs. Ukraine. Abbott's historic remake as a Trump right-winger in the past year could leave silence on the war in Ukraine as his only hope of surviving it.

But that could make it all but impossible to blame Biden for the Russian assault on its democratic neighbor like Trump tried to do last night in a Fox News interview when he falsely claimed that U.S. troops had landed in Ukraine on orders from the president who ousted him in 2020.

Miller could face the most imposing challenge after declaring in writing that "the Marxist revolution has come to America" in a fundraising pitch less than two years ago.

"We have all seen the violence, the chaos, and the logic-twisting justifications," the agriculture commissioner said at the time. "Do not doubt that the goal of the revolutionaries on the streets and in the halls of power is to END American Constitutional governance and freedom.

"To them I say, "Over my dead body."