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Looking Past The Party, The Texas House Is Blue
Hardhatters ^ | 10/16/2014 | Hal Hawkins

Posted on 10/16/2014 2:50:21 PM PDT by thetallguy24

Elections are only a few weeks away, and most polls show that Texas Republicans again will control all statewide offices and large majorities in both houses of the Legislature. On the surface, Republicans should be pretty happy with the results. By just looking at a map of the party makeup of the Texas House, Republicans appear to control vast swaths of the Lone Star State.

2013-83rd-texas-house-map-party

The devil is in the details; however, as we've provided you numerous scorecards from various organizations showing the voting records of House members in the 2013 Legislative session. Creating a map using these scores (Empower Texans in this example) yields a much different and disturbing (for Republicans at least) picture.

2013-83rd-texas-house-map-scorecard

Although we only presented a map using only Empower Texans' scores, many of the other scorecards very similar. This map will change after November 4, as some conservative and liberal Republicans lost their primary seats and others moved on. The change will only be slight.

Despite a near 2-1 Republican advantage, this map shows that the majority of House members (88), Republican and Democrat, voted blue in the legislative session. This would offer a significant explanation as to why 51% of the bills signed into law that originated in the House were written/co-written by Democrats. The plurality of Republican House members share more in common with House Democrats and care little about Republican values, perhaps using that affiliation only as a tool to get elected.

Instead of allowing your peers to assume that a Republican legislature is a safe legislature, show them this map, so they may understand that an official's votes is leagues more important in value than the "R" next to their name.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: gop; politics; republican; tx
Yikes. This is scary stuff. I knew my rep was a RINO, but the rest of Texas? If Texas is blue, is there a state in the union that isn't purple or blue?
1 posted on 10/16/2014 2:50:21 PM PDT by thetallguy24
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To: thetallguy24

The mexicans will eventually take over anyway, They breed faster.


2 posted on 10/16/2014 2:54:44 PM PDT by refermech
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To: thetallguy24

A big bite of political reality.


3 posted on 10/16/2014 2:59:58 PM PDT by EternalVigilance ( Impeach. Remove. Rinse. Repeat.)
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To: thetallguy24

It would be even more interesting (aka scary) to see how the voting maps by population density. If you imagine a 3rd dimension showing population rising up vertically out of the map, there would be huge “blue towers”, and a lot of red flatlands.

That’s why here in Illinois, you can win just 3 or 4 counties and become governor - as long as they are the right counties.


4 posted on 10/16/2014 3:03:35 PM PDT by bigbob (The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. Abraham Lincoln)
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To: bigbob

Well I think each district is 150,000 people or so, and 88 House members vote blue according to that map. I’m sure it’d look just as bad, if not worse.


5 posted on 10/16/2014 3:05:07 PM PDT by thetallguy24
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To: refermech

Yep. In a few years we will be speaking Spanish.

And not a single shot was fired.


6 posted on 10/16/2014 3:10:02 PM PDT by unixfox (Abolish Slavery, Repeal the 16th Amendment)
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To: refermech

But what will they take when there’s nothing left. CA will suffer the same fate. Detroit is already feeling the same effects.


7 posted on 10/16/2014 3:13:07 PM PDT by wac3rd (Somewhere in Hell, Ted Kennedy snickers....)
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To: refermech
yeah..like ferrets
8 posted on 10/16/2014 3:15:32 PM PDT by skinkinthegrass (Liberalism to Fabianism to Socialism to Marxism to Totalitarianism.. "the inertia of stupidity" d8-)
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To: thetallguy24

Speaker Straus was originally installed by 65 Democrats and 11 Republicans.

Now, he controls the committee chairs and they are all his cronies, even the chairs he voluntarily gives to Dems. You can’t get anything passed in the House if you aren’t on board Team Straus.

I voted for Dan Patrick for Lite Gov simply and only because he promised to end Dem chairs in the Senate. If he only does that one thing, he’ll have earned my vote. Everything else would be gravy.

If you’re a conservative on a Texas, Straus has to go. His politics towards conservatives are every bit as nasty as what happened in Miss.


9 posted on 10/16/2014 3:45:58 PM PDT by ziravan (Choose Sides.)
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To: thetallguy24

The Rio Grande Valley section of Texas was annexed by Mexico some time ago. The cancerous Mexican influence has metastasized. The U.S. is in deep doo-doo.


10 posted on 10/16/2014 4:04:21 PM PDT by ought-six ( Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule.)
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To: thetallguy24
You can prove anything with numbers.

I doubt many Texas Republicans would count as liberal or moderate in some other parts of the country.

11 posted on 10/16/2014 4:07:57 PM PDT by x
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To: thetallguy24

I think this map is probably pretty accurate. It is why we have barely made any progress on gun rights in the state. Everybody knows you can’t get elected as a democrat in the majority of the state, so the dems call themselves Republicans and people blindly vote for them because they have an (R) by their name.


12 posted on 10/16/2014 5:48:36 PM PDT by zeugma (The act of observing disturbs the observed.)
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To: thetallguy24
That will change with a new Lt. Gov.

And the House Speaker, a Democrat appeaser, has lost many of his allies in the last election and they have been replaced with Tea Party candidates.

13 posted on 10/16/2014 9:45:33 PM PDT by fortheDeclaration (Pr 14:34 Righteousness exalteth a nation:but sin is a reproach to any people)
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To: fortheDeclaration; All

Conservatives lost some seats too. Charles Perry went to the Senate. Stefani Carter lost.


14 posted on 10/17/2014 6:30:32 AM PDT by thetallguy24
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To: thetallguy24

We did our part in district 115, exchanging RINO Bennett Ratliff for Tea Party Conservative Matt Rinaldi.


15 posted on 10/29/2014 7:26:46 AM PDT by CPT Clay (Follow me on Twitter @Clay N TX)
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To: ziravan

Speaker Straus was originally installed by 65 Democrats and 11 Republicans.

I think that most of those 11 have either been defeated, retired or moved on.


16 posted on 10/29/2014 7:32:31 AM PDT by CPT Clay (Follow me on Twitter @Clay N TX)
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