Nice Problem to Have

Texas has a deep bench. All state level positions for a while now have been held by Republicans. And you can’t get anywhere unless you speak conservative. And if you speak conservative without living it, you’ll be found out.

Add to that, some top positions have been occupied for a while—ever since Governor George W. Bush stepped up (some Texans would say stepped down) to become US President. So there have been people building up their conservative skills in several other positions in this big state, and they’re ready to take the field. It’s a bit like a college football team with a second string better than most teams’ star players—and they’re all calling out, “Put me in, Coach!” (We voters are the coach.) It’s a nice problem to have.

The primary election comes up here in Texas on Tuesday, March 4^th. For you Texans, that means it’s also precinct meeting night, after the polls close. That’s one of the best places to get involved at the grassroots level. You’ll decide what you’d like to see in your state party platform, and you’ll choose delegates for the county/district convention, where those same things will be done for the next level up. (Yes, I did mention this last time around; thank you for asking.) For you people in other states, you probably have a primary coming up very soon as well. Your precinct meetings might be called something else, and they might be held separately from a voting day, but most places and parties have them in some form. So look it up, and then pass the word along to your friends.

Debate held Monday, January 20th, at King Street Patriots

One of the big races is for lieutenant governor, a rather powerful second-in-command position in the state. The slate of candidates for Texas Lieutenant Governor is down to four: incumbent David Dewhurst, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, and District 7 State Senator Dan Patrick. In different circumstances (not all against each other), I would probably be happy with any one of them. They’re all conservative, personable, articulate, good-humored, and effective over time with a strong record. They squared off in a debate here in Houston this past Monday, which I got to attend.

Maybe something should be said about why there is such a challenge for a relatively popular and effective incumbent. I’m guessing on this. Back in 2012 Lt. Gov. Dewhurst ran for the US Senate, Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s vacated seat. He lost to Ted Cruz. I think that was a surprise to him at a point in his career when logic said it was time to move up. Failing that, I think it was assumed by many he would run for governor, once Gov. Perry (who has been governor longer than any other in Texas history) announced he would not run again.

But after the confidence loss of the senatorial race, along with the announcement by the popular and effective Attorney General Greg Abbott that he was running for governor, Dewhurst seems to have decided to stay with the safer Lt. Gov. position. It’s just that, by the time he made that decision, there were a number of others who had been planning their futures based on the likelihood of a vacancy in the Lt. Gov. position. And even after it was known Dewhurst was staying, there was a sense that 14 years is more than enough for anyone; get out of the way! So the challengers went ahead as planned.

That Dewhurst senate campaign, in 2012, wasn’t particularly effective: too much attacking a noble and effective person, and too many formal settings, meaning debates and distance from the people. This time around he has surrounded himself with handlers who let him do better what works for him—talk one-on-one with people, in small groups, with individuals, unscripted. He’s charming in person. A couple of months ago he came to our little local tea party meeting. He asked if he could meet with leadership ahead of time, just sit around at a table and talk, for a full hour. Our tea party isn’t exactly full of titles. We have a president, who arranges speakers for our meetings and manages our email group and Facebook page. N one else has an official position. I’m just a faithful, longtime participant, and I’ve taken on some assignments from time to time. But I got invited to that meeting. He spent an hour with four of us, asking us questions about what was important to us, answering whatever he could. He connects very well in that kind of setting. Then he spent another half hour or so speaking to the whole group once they arrived. That was more of a stump speech, but he included Q&A time at the end.

I should mention that this was something like a visiting team disadvantage. Dan Patrick is our state senator. We have known him since he was just the guy on the radio (he owns local station KSEV and did a daily talk show, which he still does as time permits). Most of us decided to support him in his first run, in pre-Tea Party years. He has been much more responsive than his predecessor. My kids and I have met with him in his Austin office during legislative sessions. Without appointment there were a couple of times he stood with us in his foyer and answered anything we were concerned about for twenty minutes or so. He knows his stuff. He was effective this past session heading the education committee, and I’ve noticed as he has become more informed about homeschooling and more in favor of choice for parents. He’s the only candidate who doesn’t currently hold statewide office, but in our little corner of the state—which happens to be one of the largest and most conservative districts—he’s seen as practically heroic.

And it was in this setting that Dewhurst came and sat to talk with us. That was brave. And time-consuming. It was generous of him to come, and I wanted to be open to be persuadable.

He is tall and impressive in person. He seems much more articulate in an intimate setting than in a debate. He doesn’t seem slow of speech or slow of thought when he’s making a personal connection. And he does have a valid point that Texas has done very well, compared to the rest of the country, by moving more conservative over this past decade. And the worse the federal government is for the country, the better Texas looks.

Still, there are some specific issues we conservative Texans are concerned about: border security, low taxes, standing up against federal government intrusions. Federal regulations that prevent people from using their land and resources because there might be some lizard living on those thousands of acres, for example. Filing lawsuits against the federal government, by the dozens, has been the common practice. And while I think that is one direction to go, simply refusing to abide is sometimes what Texas should do. We did that in refusing to set up an Obamacare state exchange, for example. We’re trying to protect our own border, since the federal government fails to do so.

I want to give a fair representation of all of the candidates, including how they did in this debate, covering how they approach the issues. So we’ll do a part II tomorrow.

 

If you’re a regular here, you may have noticed that, after I came back from the holiday break, I’ve been writing just twice a week. I’m spending my other allotted writing time on a related writing project. But some weeks I may just have to write more. We’ll take it as it comes.

Dave Built That

This past Saturday at the local Cypress Texas Tea Party meeting, after our speaker, time was opened up for general discussion, as usual. A man stood up and told his story. His name is Dave; I didn’t catch the last name. I hope he doesn’t mind my sharing his story here, but it was the kind of story that was beautifully told and ought to be shared again.

Dave is Hispanic (in America since childhood and possibly all his life; he’s a voting citizen). He grew up poor, the oldest of seven children. He worked through his teenage and college years as a migrant farm worker, along with his family, in Michigan. It was in Detroit that he attended school. The migrant farm worker season ran six weeks into the school year, so every year he started school late and had to catch up. And going to school required getting permission from his father; he proved he wanted the education, and he worked hard. Through college, he had to get his father to let him use the money he earned toward his education, instead of toward the support of the family.

Dave wanted to study architecture, and the local college didn’t have a good architectural program, but he got accepted to Texas A&M, which is how he ended up in Texas. He worked his way through, what he considered part-time, which was 40 hours a week (a lot less than the “full-time” work he was used to).

Out of college he got a job with Fluor Daniel, building chemical plants around the world. It was a good job, and he got a lot of good experience. But he had always dreamed of owning his own business. So twenty-one years ago (I think he’d said this was after a couple of decades working for Fluor, but I’m not sure), he left the security of the income, took the risk of putting everything he had into an architectural engineering company, and over time they have been blessed with success.

Then, a few weeks ago he heard President Obama say, “You didn’t build that.” And that made him mad. What part of all that sacrifice should he not get credit for? That was why he decided to come to our Tea Party meeting, to find out what he can do.

Dave has always been conservative. But he knows plenty of Hispanics who aren’t. He talks with them, but many of them don’t even think about their vote. He says when he asks them whether or not they pay taxes—the ones who don’t, the ones who instead receive handouts from government, they’re a lot more likely to vote Democrat. Some just vote Democrat because that’s what everyone around them does; they don’t even know why.

I’d like an answer to Dave’s question: what can we do? As a small, independent Tea Party group, we do several things. We educate one another, on candidates, on issues, on how government works. We meet with candidates and hear speakers from organizations (Saturday’s was from Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, which follows legislation related to taxes and budgets, and helps keep people informed). We share articles with each other, with an email group and a Facebook page. During the state legislative session, we follow legislation on issues that are important to people in our group, and we meet with legislators and/or their staff to let them know our opinions—and we thank them when they vote the way we like. We don’t as a group endorse candidates, but individually we do, and we share that information. Many of us have worked for free and fair elections with True the Vote, as poll workers and poll watchers, and verifying voter information.

I don’t know if participating in our group is enough; it’s a start. But with Dave’s connections to the Hispanic community, I’d like to know ways we could spread our message there. We, as conservatives, have a lot more in common with the values of Hispanics than liberals do. We believe in hard work, strong families, personal responsibility, and getting government out of the way—lower taxes, less unnecessary regulation. We are pro-small business. We’re a lot more likely to say, “Yes, go ahead and build that,” than, “You can’t take credit for that; government made that happen.” And when people are in need, we’re a lot more likely to give personally, through a church or local charity, so our giving doesn’t have to filter through government hands. I think if people in the Hispanic community knew us and knew our message, they’d find themselves comfortably welcome.

Are there better ways, maybe untried ways, to share the conservative message with Hispanic voters? I imagine there are, but I don’t yet know what those avenues will be. For now, we depend on Dave and people like him to keep telling their stories. Yes, life might be tough, but it’s not hopeless. If we can just keep government out of the way, we can work hard and build that dream here in America.

Power versus Individual Freedom

I realized something this past week that has stuck with me, so I wanted to write about it. It’s about the Tea Party, what it is, what it represents. This is something pols and media seem to miss. It isn’t about gaining power; it’s about regaining individual freedom.

In Spherical Model terms, desiring power over other individuals is anathema to freedom. Power hunger is a southern hemisphere trait (the tyranny side of the sphere), while desire for individual freedom combined with voluntarily working together for good in the community is a northern hemisphere trait (the freedom half of the sphere). (I wrote a three-part series on the difference between power hunger and leadership here, here, and here.)

Tea Parties are not a power seeking movement, where you measure effectiveness by how many legislators they get elected. Effectiveness has to do with how much freedom all Americans feel as a result of their efforts.

First, it is not a political party; the word “party” refers to the original Boston Tea Party, which was a statement (actually a rebellious act, a demonstration) against unfair taxation. “Taxed Enough Already” is an acronym often used. It is a movement, and a revival of the original founders and their revolution against tyranny. It is not a call to demonstrate with acts of lawlessness; it is a call to action through whatever legal, constitutional means are available. It is a groundswell of regular hard-working Americans across a wide spectrum of income, experience, and backgrounds, most of whom have left the political world well enough alone up until now—until things have gotten so bad that they’re not going to take it anymore. They don’t come asking, “What can this group do for me?” but they ask, “What can I do about this mess we’re in?”

There was talk about what kind of influence they had in Texas’s senate race, where Ted Cruz beat David Dewhurst. Ted Cruz appealed to Tea Partiers; it was at my first Tea Party rally that I first heard him speak, and he made enough of a positive impression that I was willing to consider him as my candidate this year for the senate. But it wasn’t because he associated with the Tea Party; it was because his message resonated with the people going to Tea Parties: we need smaller government, lower taxes, and adherence to our US Constitution.

The local tea party group that I attend regularly (we meet every three weeks) receives no funding, collects no dues, and has no expenses. We use free social media (Facebook and Google groups), and meet in a party room at a local restaurant that lets us use the space for free on the assumption that many of those attending will buy their lunch there. We voted as a group that we would not endorse candidates. Individuals could endorse and share their opinions, but the group as a whole would give no endorsements. And yet during campaign years we have candidates come and speak with us at every meeting. They know that just having access to our group, meeting people in person, is good for their campaign.

Our purpose is two-fold: educating citizens, and helping citizens know what they can do to have an effect on government. We have learned about the US Constitution, the legislative process in our state, the specific issues before our legislature and how to best become citizen lobbyists on specific issues. We’ve learned about how the court system is set up in the state. We’ve learned about the Railroad Commission and its actual role in natural resource use.

We invite opposing viewpoints, and we share articles and ideas and discussions. We do essentially what the early Boston patriots did when they met beneath the Liberty Tree. We’re not party affiliated. Democrats get invited to come and share their positions (so far, though, they don’t come). We have lively discussions between various Republican and Libertarian viewpoints.

I expect the Tea Party, as a loose association of individual community groups across the country—as well as other-named similar groups—will continue as long as there are people who want to learn more about their civic responsibilities and ways they can work toward the greater individual freedoms that we’ve been deprived of even though they’re guaranteed to us constitutionally.

What we don’t have are people with a desire to wield power over others, only to break off those shackles that have been placed on us. Because, to those who love the great experiment in freedom that is America, it’s not about exerting force over others; it is about exercising our God-given rights.