S’cuse me...ever heard of Zell Miller?
Ever heard of Phil Gramm?
Ever heard of Ralph Hall?
Congressman Ralph Hall from Rockwall, TX had the most conservative voting record in the U.S. House for many years - 100% - as a Democrat. He finally switched parties after he was white haired and elderly. When it came to voting for the Dem Speaker candidate, he didn’t. Voted “present” instead, all those years. Today Ralph Hall is a Republican, way into his 80s, and voted against raising the debt ceiling.
Phil Gramm, as a Congressman from rural East Central Texas, helped Ronald Reagan get his bills through Congress, while Gramm was a Democrat. He was not only a grown man but a college economics professor before finally switching to the Republican party.
Zell Miller never became a Republican, but he spoke at the Republican Convention and helped his chosen candidates any way he could. He said he would rather go back to Georgia and die a Democrat than continue in politics either as a Democrat in a left wing party, or change to a Republican...his father would never have understood or believed he would become a Republican, Zell said. He said he was too old to become anything else, but that the party had left him.
Rick Perry was born and raised in rural Texas. Republicans didn’t even exist there when he was coming of age. It took a lot of Texans many, many, many years to finally throw off their tradition and become Republicans. In the minds of generations of Democrats, Republicans were associated with Reconstruction after the Civil War and with Herbert Hoover.
Perry tried to hang on to the tradition of his generations of family members. By staying in as long as he did, all he proved was how hard it came to him to change party affiliation. I have given you examples to show just what a hard sell Republicans were to especially rural Texans and to a rural Georgian. Like in the movie and play, “Fiddler on the Roof”...tradition, tradition, tradition!
But he did change parties.
Where Perry was from, Paint Creek, you could not even run as a Republican if you wanted to, for a very long time. There was no apparatus there. No Republican Primary. No Republicans.
You understand nothing about Texas politics and political history.
Nothing.
My dad switched from a dem to a pubbie. It was hard for him.
He said it was because of FDR and his anti-business efforts.
My dad absolutely loathed LBJ, too, and welfare, which he saw as stealing someone’s soul and individualism.