Texas AG on why he supports the Big Lie: "We're done in Texas if anyone can vote"

They stopped hiding the true rationale of these proposed voter restrictions a while ago…

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus

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“We’re done in Texas if anyone can vote.”

Cant he just say: My full statement is obviously:

“We’re done in Texas if non-citizens can vote and/or Democrat citizens can vote more than once and/or dead people can vote.”

It cuts off, so the full context is not clear. It’s not clear if he’s conceding that Democrats will (legally) outvote Republicans, given a free and fair election.

I think it’s more a sign of desperation than comfort. If they were feeling secure, they wouldn’t be talking about the whole thing at all.

The Onion, once again, knows its shit.

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The Constitution of the USA*. The Magna Carta*. The Bible*.

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Taking advantage of that is how Sacha Baron Cohen does his thing.

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Except that they are well aware that such fraud is not widespread, and are using these comments to cover up their arguments that only certain people should vote. They are using these arguments to give themselves plausible deniability on their desire to create a white ethno-state, in case they lose and we prevail.

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Agreed; what he genuinely meant is NOT “unclear” at all.

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… because he’s not trying to fool anyone? The AG of Texas supports restricting voting to certain groups of people at the expense of others in order to maintain republican majority leadership in texas.

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It’s really only “news” because he said it out loud. We’ve known this for a long time, but they keep putting up this facade of “fairness” and “legitimate” votes to defend what they really want.

The way democracy is supposed to work is people vote for politicians who support policies they want. You either change your views to reflect what the people want, or you get voted out. The GOP doesn’t want to change, but they also don’t want to lose power. So the only avenue left is doing away with voting in the first place.

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It’s so much easier, after all.

Not easy at all for any GQP cultist, inexperienced as they are to performing that particular act. It is surprising that he didn’t fall over sideways during the process, something like a 3-year-old’s first ride on a bicycle without training wheels.

I have had some tiffs on FB where people think America isn’t a democracy. I am like, “It isn’t a direct democracy - except when it is (special votes.) But it is a representational democracy. A democratic republic. It is a type of democracy, but make no mistake, a democracy none the less.”

And these fucking old farts are like, “Wrong!”

I swear to god.

Then I hear Mark Levin etc talk about “mob rule” and the dangers of the French Revolution, and how the congress during the civil rights movement stood up to the mob to pass civil rights legislation. They keep perpetuating that they are the ones who can stand up to the barbarians at the gates. Democracy is fine as long as you keep voting for them.

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It is no longer about saying the quiet part out loud. Republicans are saying everything out loud: Mitch McConnell Comments Comparing 'African Americans' and 'Americans' Spark Outrage

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For me when I post things like that it’s more like…

Well, why do some people keep perceiving it as radical somehow or inflammatory if I say that the AG has a position wherein he believes some amount of voter restriction is warranted? Is it so hard to believe he, on some level, is making a legitimate apologetic argument for reinstating methods to replace the dismantled poll taxes, poll tests, or other methods of voter segregation and discrimination that were the norm literally just a generation or two ago in this very same place? These things are very commonly blamed here for making everything worse and politicians who offer to reinstate restrictions on voting have legitimate support to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars flowing into campaigns.

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Do you pay attention to Texas politics at all? Paxton is super shady. Multiple lawsuits for violating the law ongoing, right now. Fired his entire executive staff when they reported him using his office for a political donor. Cheated on his wife with at least one affair. Files frivolous lawsuits using state money. We’re talking wasting millions of dollars in tax payer money on lawsuits he knows he can’t win.
He’s a terrible person, a corrupt politician, and a bully who only uses his office to pursue his pet conservative causes instead of the actual work the AG is supposed to be doing.

Seriously. He does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Whether he said what he meant to say or not, he meant what he said. He wants voter suppression and has been working on it with zeal.

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People use it to mean different things.

A democracy is a system whereby those in power are elected by the populace. (representative democracy)
A democracy is a system whereby political power is allocated to the people in general, and not to particular classes of people (the basis for socialist dictatorships pretending to be democratic)
A democracy is a system whereby poeple are selected by lottery to exercise power on behalf of the state (the jury system, athenian democracy, sortition)

The last is Montesquieu’s definition.

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Officially, the republicans believe that an unrestricted franchise allows people to vote twice, non-citizens to vote, the dead to vote, and prisoners to vote. Most of us here dismiss those as paranoid delusions, and move on to the “real reason” Republicans restrict the franchise, which is to secure a structural advantage in a society that would tend to vote for the non-Republican candidates, if only they could do so if given the chance.

Where’s the role for doubt? Oh, Paxton suffers from paranoid delusions, so we should allow him to remain in power, uncriticized?

People who genuinely extend the benefit of the doubt are admitting they don’t know everything and don’t want their fallible imaginations to fill in the details (or are kind of afraid of their imaginations filling in the details.)

Fine, you lack the knowledge to understand Ken Paxton as a genuinely evil man. But surely there is enough evidence to suggest that he’s a political opportunist and a cynic?

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One is left to wonder if it is stupidity or a firm belief they are winning that would cause someone to say things like this in public where it could turn back and bite in court.

Or are these fools put up to distract watchers from something more sinister in the background.

That’s the part that worries me: Are there actually intelligent people behind the scenes making these fools dance to attract a crowd while the real evil is done in secret?

Or has America simply become this stupid on so many levels which I grant sure appears to be accurate these days.

I’m too old for a civil war to erupt and 2024 scares me badly in that regard. I just keep hoping Trump will keep stuffing himself with cheeseburgers and diet soft drinks until something goes "pop’ quietly and he is reduced to a drooling wreck.

I think the ensuing power struggle would tear the Republican party asunder which would be just fine these days.

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his statement, from the podcast, in the context of the most recent “voting rights” bill, was–
“It’s just a matter of, whether it’s this time, the next time, the next time, we’re done in Texas if anybody can vote.”

as an 8th generation texas native who has been following texas politics for 44 years, his statement means exactly what it sounds like it means: if any texas citizen can vote without hindrance or intimidation then the republican party is doomed because the g.o.p. death cult has few to no policies which are popular with anyone beyond a tiny minority. indeed, their policies are generally unpopular even within identified republican voters. the only way they can win elections is to thin the voter pool to the point that the tiny minority of republican voters can carry the day.

to this highly attentive, long-term observer of texas politics the context is abundantly clear. the notion that

is either wishful thinking or willful blindness. paxton has too many statements in the public record for him to say:

by the lived experiences from my political awakening to the present day i have seen republican efforts to strip members of the democratic base of their right to vote. until 2013 the voting rights act of 1965 prevented the worst excesses of the republican party although they were able to make it incredibly difficult for college students living away from their home town to vote. the hoops i had to jump through in order to cast a ballot while i was in college were enormous but i used my white privilege and my knowledge of the system in order to do it, even managing to be a jesse jackson delegate to the 1984 state democratic convention. in 2013 the shelby case gutted the “preclearance” provisions of the voting rights act which opened the floodgates. now, in addition to remarkably convoluted gerrymandering of districts to dilute the power of democratic constituencies and voter i.d. requirements meant to prevent “in-person” voter fraud–a type of fraud so rare republican task forces have had trouble finding examples which would represent even 1 fraudulent vote in 1,000,000 votes, the republican party of autocracy and death wishes to permit armed “poll watchers”, reduced voting hours, reduced voting days, and increasing the difficulty of absentee and mail-in voting.

ken paxton spoke the truth of what he wants: no more and no less. to believe otherwise is, effectively, on a par with believing in the tooth fairy. good luck with that.

edited to add quotation marks to clarify attribution in the second quotation.

edited to add the first person singular pronoun to the first line of my penultimate paragraph.

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