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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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Texas elected its first R governor since Reconstruction in 1978, and exchanged parties back and forth until George W. Bush was elected in 1995. In the past 28 years, Texas has had three governors--Bush, Perry, and Abbott--all Republicans. The state Senate went R in 1997, and the state House followed in 2003.

I can’t speak to other states here, but a major caveat on ‘republicans control the Texas house’ is that the Texas house is currently controlled by a coalition agreement including lots of democrats, and has since 2003.

This is because of A) blue doggers who are basically republicans but in Spanish and B) efforts by moderate republicans to exclude the most conservative republicans from positions of influence. The Texas house is about 1/3 partisan Republican(not all of these are Uberconservatives, they’re just all partisan), 40% dem(some of these are blue doggers but many are not, and there are some fairly progressive democrats in high ranking house positions), and everyone else moderate.