While a few GOP House members publicly denounced the attack on teachers and overt AAPI racism, most have remained silent.
A few days ago, ex-Empower Texas CEO Michael Quinn Sullivan tweeted that teachers were unemployable adults hired by the government to babysit children. Well, as you can imagine, this pissed a whole lot of people off.
Of course, scores of Democrats publicly condemned the GOP influencer for his offensive words; Terry Canales, Diego Bernal, Erin Zwiener, to name a few.
Jared Patterson, of all people, is the only Republican that spoke out against MQS. Of course, this doesn’t let Patterson off of the hook for his bad behavior, but it at least shows that he’s capable of empathy if a person is close to him.
Or does it?
This year, Patterson has already taken $5,000 from the Charter Schools NOW PAC. So, while on Twitter, he’s turning on the tears at MQS’s attack on public school teachers; behind the scenes, he’s taking money from a PAC that aims to do away from public school teachers.
Empower Texans, the Texas Scorecard, and the other intertwined organizations fund most Republicans in the Texas House. Most Republicans don’t have the guts to speak out against them because it would cost them campaign dollars.
Empower Texans and the Texas Scorecard were behind the voter suppression bills, the anti-abortion bills, the anti-LGBTQ bills, and ending public education is on their list of agendas. As terrible as this last legislative session was, you aren’t paying attention if you don’t believe it can get worse.
Criminal Barbie Shelley Luther went full-on, balls-to-the-wall racist on Representative Gene Wu and the AAPI Community.
It all started when Luther tweeted that all Chinese students should be banned from attending Texas Universities. She has since deleted that tweet.
Then Representative Gene Wu tweeted that he sent out a statement today condemning the bigoted and ignorant statements.
And of course, the decent thing to do would have been to apologize, but Luther did not apologize; she doubled down on her racism, then tripled down and quadrupled down.
Luther accused Wu of “simping for the CCP” (I think she meant the “CCCP”).
Of course, she said that her AAPI hate was pulled directly from the Texas Republican Party platform. Seriously.
She didn’t stop there.
She retweeted one of Wu’s posts, saying she “hopes Xi sees this.”
THEN, she tweeted some more racist shit about being in a war with China over the virus and Communism.
Shelley Luther is running for HD62. The incumbent is Reggie Smith. There aren’t any Democrats running, but if Luther wins, the result would be a disaster. Can you imagine this woman teaming up with Briscoe Cain and Steve Toth in the House? They’ll have us back to using separate water fountains by the end of the decade.
HD62 is Delta, Fannin, and Grayson counties. And while they don’t yet have a large enough community to elect a progressive candidate, there is a growing community of progressives in Grayson County. They have enough influence to sway this race between two Republicans, whether by door knocking or phone banking for Smith. That doesn’t mean they sacrifice their primary vote; just get a few righties to the polls for him.
It’ll be interesting to see whether local Democrats or progressives decide to get involved.
Jacey Jetton made a long heart-felt post in response to Luther’s attacks on the AAPI community.
Jetton was spot-on with his response, and I gained some respect for him. That being said, Republicans like Jared Patterson and Jacey Jetton are likely oblivious to see how the GOP’s repetitive rhetoric about Communism, Marxism, and socialism have been part of what’s led to hate in this country towards the AAPI community.
Michael Quinn Sullivan and Shelley Luther’s comments over the weekend were awful, and most people on both sides of the aisle recognized this.
A few other Republicans condemned them, but nearly 200 Texas elected Republican officials on Twitter. Less than ten had spoken out in support of teachers or condemning Luther’s comments. That says a lot about the modern-day Republican party.
This year, it isn’t just good enough to vote; you have to talk to every non-voter you know and tell them why this election is so important.
Too much is at stake.
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