That's Ken Paxton, above. Paxton is currently the Attorney General for the state of Texas. He is running for election this November, hoping to become a United States Senator for Texas. Paxton's opponent is James Talarico, a Bible-toting nice guy. Paxton is anything but a nice guy. You probably know all that, if you are keeping up with the news.
My blog posting, today, is not, really, intended to focus on Ken Paxton. I want to comment on a policy announced by Paxton's wife, Angela Paxton, who is also a Texas politician. Her comments in a recent article in The New York Times struck me as significant. The article was titled, "Politics In Mind, Estranged Wife Sticks By Paxton." That is, of course, the "hardcopy" title. Online, the headline will be a bit different, but the article is the same. Click the link to read it as a "gift article," available to you even if you don't subscribe to The New York Times.
Angela is currently divorcing Ken, "on Biblical grounds." That means that Angela is divorcing her Attorney General husband because he has committed adultery. Nonetheless, Angela is actively urging that the voters in Texas elect her husband to the United States Senate. Here's her explanation, as presented in the article in The Times:
As the race tightened, Ms. Paxton, who declined a request for an interview, began quietly making the case for her husband in private conversations and small party gatherings. In remarks to a women’s club in September, which she pointedly titled “The Elephant in the Room,” she announced her plans to back the entire Republican ticket.
“It’s not the people — it’s the seat,” Ms. Paxton said in the speech, which she later posted on YouTube. “Because we have more control over that seat and the future when we control the seat — when it’s still in the family, even if we’re mad at them.”
Ms. Paxton, in other words, subscribes to the idea that voters have two choices (and only two). You're either "Red" or "Blue." If a decent person who otherwise appeals to you (as Talarico does) happens to be in the "Blue" party, you're supposed to reject that "person" because "party" is everything. I note that Ms. Paxton does not apply this rule to her own life (she is divorcing that guy whom she has found to be a dishonest liar).
Unfortunately, Angela Paxton's understanding of how politics should be practiced is not unique to her. As anyone who regularly reads my blog postings knows, I think that the "Paxton Policy," as articulated by Angela Paxton, is 100% dead wrong - at least, it's wrong if you would like our politics to be based on what our Constitution calls for.
The Constitution, let me reiterate, does not recognize "parties" as a key category. It recognizes "persons," and it suggests that we, as a society, should make decisions about what our nation should do by having voters elect people in whom they have personal confidence, with the implicit corollary being that we should boot them out of office if they do not properly or worthily represent us. It is pretty clear that virtually the entire Republican Party (with only a few exceptions) has bought into the "Paxton Policy" on how we should operate our politics. The majority of the House of Representatives, and the majority of the United States Senate, are currently members of the Republican Party. They have stood by and watched our current president turn the government into a mechanism for his personal aggrandizement, and have ceded their Constitutional duty to determine whether or not the nation should go to war to that same person. Why? Clearly, it's the party tag that counts, not what the person does, or what kind of a person she or he is.
The correct response to the "Paxton Policy" is not to "vote Blue." That's just the same policy with a different coloration.
We need to choose our representatives because of their personal qualities, by by our evaluation of whether or not they will do a good job for us - not by the color by which they identify their party allegiance.
That approach to politics is what we need to resuscitate if we want to maintain self-government in the United States of America. So, if you happen to live in Texas, check out the guy below, James Talarico, and don't be fooled by the bad advice being handed out by Ken Paxton's wife:
Image Credits:
(1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Paxton
(2) - https://jamestalarico.com/meet-james-talarico/
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment!