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.
