I want to write about so many things that have happened recently in the news, as it feel like so many of our Texas politicos have lost their ever-loving minds.
Ken Paxton claimed victory in a court case with the U.S. Supreme Court, which he lost to a Texas farmer. Greg Abbott has made a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, this week, claiming how excellent he thinks public schools are. There's a new "Contract with Texas" being pushed by five incumbent House Members calling for "reform" of the Texas House and signed primarily by candidates who have yet to be officially elected to the Texas House. And don't even get me started on what's happening with Trump texting out information on his potential jurors or the latest attempts to vacate the speaker in Washington, D.C.
I’m writing about what I think is the most entertaining and unserious political event of the week: the release of a "documentary" by the group Texas Scorecard (formerly Empower Texans and a host of other names) that targets Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) as the "Kingmakers" of Texas politics. The piece is titled Hubris.
Texas Scorecard is a self-proclaimed “news” website that pushes the most egregious forms of propaganda under the guise of journalism. They write inflammatory pieces targeting public school districts for "corruption," and they are obsessed with writing about pornography and other salacious topics. (I found around 80 stories on their website under pornography). They promote the ideas of people like former Rep. Bryan Slaton, who was forced to leave the Texas House because of an illegal and inappropriate relationship with an underaged Capitol staffer, and the disgraced former legislator Jonathan Stickland, who lost favor when he got busted for hosting a business meeting with a well known antisemitic social media influencer.
What's the saying? "Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you will become."
Their latest "documentary" might be considered a parody because it is exaggerated and comical, yet they will push it out to their followers as truth, and many will believe them. If I were a movie critic, I would say one positive thing about it. The title is spot on. These Scorecard-associated folks are experts in one area, as no group possesses more Hubris than the producers and actors featured in this project.
Hubris: exaggerated pride or self-confidence
In contrast to the video and the sure-to-follow smear campaign, Texans for Lawsuit Reform has been a strong partner working alongside Conservatives, and they have been an integral part of the efforts to elect Republicans to the Legislature in Texas since their formation. Sure, they are very strategic in how they choose candidates to back, and that is simply because they are a professional operation backed by some of the most successful business leaders in the State. They allocate their resources to the candidates they believe will best support their mission to end lawsuit abuse and make the court system more balanced, fair, and predictable.
The video claims that TLR was behind the push to impeach Ken Paxton because Paxton claims they "don't support him." My research however reveals that TLR has donated over $1.2M to Ken Paxton since 2015 and is actually listed as his top donor. So they did have early support Ken Paxton, but many, like the rest of us, have some concerns with his morality and stopped. Do you blame them?
The video also features a series of interviews with candidates and elected officials who did not receive TLR's support during their election, which I would categorize as sour grapes.
Why is this relevant?
This smear effort is led by a small group of like-minded opportunists who call themselves conservatives. Many in this faction had struggled to get a foothold in Texas politics until they found a sugar daddy in Tim Dunn, who was willing to fund them. If you follow the path of some of these players, you can see how they had been working on the fringes.
TLR is the biggest threat to their power.
What's most interesting to me is that one of the interviews in the video is with Brady Gray, who runs the Texas family project, another one of the Conservative Corporate projects. He actually admits that this is all about power.
TLR has it, and the Texas Scorecard wants it.
In this latest attack, the deception on behalf of Texas Scorecard is bold and shameful. The contributions of TLR to a Texas Republican majority and the Texas Miracle are unmatched. TLR was the first organized movement in Texas to fund candidates who supported conservative business policies, and those early efforts were a catalyst for the Republican Revolution in the 1990s. TLR worked alongside the Texas GOP to help deliver the first Republican Texas House majority since reconstruction in the early 2000s, and they have continued to support Republican candidates throughout the last 30 years. The History of the Texas GOP cannot be told without acknowledging the strong commitment of TLR to the movement.
These attacks on groups like TLR are an attempt by the Scorecard folks to weaponize us, conservative rural Texas, Republican women, and the party faithful against our best interest by pushing propaganda against groups and people they cannot control. They have all the resources they need to create chaos and confusion.
But don’t be confused. Groups like Scorecard and their affiliates are attempting to re-write history to confuse voters, not in the interest of good policies, but instead solely in the interest of power.
I started the The Texas Rural Reporter to give a voice to Rural Texas and our conservative values. I report on the political happenings in Texas as someone who is living in rural Texas but knows the landscape of the Texas political scene from working in and around in Texas politics for 30 years. Please help me grow my reach by becoming a paid subscriber, by sharing our posts or contact us to sponsor a newsletter.
The internecine warfare paralyzing the Texas GOP does not serve the people of Texas, and especially not the people of rural Texas who provide the GOP with its margins of victory in statewide races. Vouchers is a good example: rural Texans understand the appeal of private, taxpayer-funded schools, but know such schools will never be built in their communities. Meanwhile, the Texas GOP has no plan to improve rural health care, or address food deserts, or make higher education more affordable.