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Maybe now that he no longer has his office to help him kick the can of a trial down the road a few more years, they might actually be able to try him on the indictments handed down in 2015.
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That was my first thought. If he’s suspended from office pending the impeachment trial, can the other indictments proceed? I’d hope those would be pretty slam dunk cases.
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I’ve seen reports that Biden managed to get someone installed in the relevant office who will push forward with Federal criminal charges, replacing some Shiatgibbon toady who sat on them. Thus the rest of the Texas GOP wants Paxton gone ASAP, so they don’t get sucked down with him.
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“How dare you try to overrule my election and disenfranchise all those people who voted for me! This is profoundly illegal and undemocratic! Also, it’s a distraction from my self-appointed task of overruling the 2020 Presidential election and disenfranchising everyone who voted for Biden.”
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That Ken Paxton is a spectacularly giant piece of shit is like the first thing anyone learns about Texas politics when they move here.
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there absolutely is restraint on corruption … for democrats.
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Yeah, they wouldn’t want anyone to look too closely at the previous AG.
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I would put the Lt. Governor higher on the power chart than that. Unlike the US Vice President, Texas’s Lt. Governor is actually the leader of the state senate. The job is basically what you would get if you combined the Senate Majority Leader and the Vice President into one job. Bush did help make the Governor a stronger position, but I’d still put Lt. Governor as 1a in power right behind the Governor. Also making that position more powerful is the fact that it is elected separately from the Governor. They don’t run together on a single ticket like President/Vice-President.
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yup. that’s how i remember the power structure when i lived there (long before shrub was gov). lt. gov was the power player in texas and, as you stated, gov and lt. gov don’t run on the same ticket and can (and have) be adversarial.
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I’m on the fencepost watching this show. I really wonder if the Texas Senate will take Paxton down? I mean come on, the guy has been indicted for all this other stuff and nothing happened? It’s like being a Teflon Don!
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Thirded. Definitely lt gov is more powerful in tx than is typical. I didn’t know Patrick disliked Paxton though, thought those two were thick as thieves… Quite literally.
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I feel like the three of them (Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton) have a pretty uneasy alliance. Patrick pissed a lot of Republicans off when he successfully primaried the incumbent Republican Lt. Governor in 2014. And I feel like it’s pretty obvious both Patrick and Paxton would both run for Governor the second Abbott decides to not run for re-election, and they probably hope that happens sooner than later. I also find it interesting that Ted Cruz, who no one likes, stepped in to at least vocally support Paxton. I don’t think there’s a ton of camaraderie in the Texas GOP right now.
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Until Bush and Perry, I would agree with you, but those two did a lot of maneuvering while they were in the Governor’s office which changed how the GOP in Texas functions. Perhaps I should have used the term “influence” rather than “power”.
I think they all have tried to operate independently, but whenever you saw two of them side against the third, it was usually Abbot and Patrick vs Paxton.
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That’s why I said 1a instead of 1. I still think Lt. Gov has more power and influence than the AG. The Lt. Gov has a lot of control over the budget. Even if we just go ahead and say that the AG has more influence in the executive branch, that still makes the Lt. Gov the #3 person in the executive branch and the #1 person in the legislative branch. That’s a lot.
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