How self-important do you have to be to insist upon meeting in a large gathering in the middle of a pandemic in a city that is blowing up with cases of coronavirus? Texas GOP executive committee and delegate self-important. But state Republican elected officials have figured this one out. From Cassandra Pollock at the Texas Tribune:
The Republican Party of Texas is moving forward with its controversial in-person convention during the coronavirus pandemic — but elected officials including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will be giving their scheduled speeches virtually.
“All the elected officials are switching from a live, in-person speech to videos,” Kyle Whatley, the party’s executive director, said during a town hall livestreamed Tuesday night. “They’re doing that for us in order to focus all the attention on the business of the meeting and to get everybody in and out of here as quickly and as safely as possible.”
LOL, sure, to focus on business and the safety of others. Wait. You are still going to have the speeches. How does that help anything? Dumbasses. The elected officials just aren’t as stupid, although certainly as self-important.
Where to start? I keep hearing from delegates that the upcoming election is too important to not have an in-person convention. Huh? Exactly how is the convention going to help in the upcoming election? By adding more idiotic planks to the already bloated party platform? You know, the platform that elected officials ignore.
The thing is, if you’ve been around Republican politics for any length of time, you know the reason for insisting upon an in-person convention. The SREC members and many delegates have come to the conclusion that it is more important for them to control the party than it is to win elections. Gay folk want a booth? No way, get the hell out of here, we have important cocktails to drink while we scheme against other Republicans.
The RPT continues to talk about all of the safety measures that they will have in place. First off, many wild-eyed delegates aren’t going to follow any safety measures. Because, “it’s muh right”, dontcha know? Second, what about the service workers at the hotels and restaurants? How many restaurants have reported cases of staff Covid again? So let’s get infected and take it back to podunk Texas and have our own outbreak dammit!
I’ve also heard the tired rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter protests being “allowed” and what about that? Well, what about that? It turns out that the data refute that notion.
In the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, health officials expressed great concern that protesters, potentially yelling and shouting in very close proximity, would quickly spread the virus, which might lead to devastating outbreaks.
However, researchers found “no evidence that urban protests reignited Covid-19 case growth during the more than three weeks following protest onset.”
In fact, they determined that, based on cellphone data, “cities which had protests saw an increase in social distancing behavior for the overall population relative to cities that did not,” leading to “modest evidence of a small longer-run case growth decline.”
The study’s lead author, Dhaval Dave of Bentley University, said, “In many cities, the protests actually seemed to lead to a net increase in social distancing, as more people who did not protest decided to stay off the streets.”
(click here to read the article on Forbes.com or here to read the study by the National Bureau of Economic Research)
It was fairly easy to guess that this was the case, given the fact that cities other than Houston had massive protests with no increase in coronavirus cases and the whole indoors/outdoors thing but hey, who cares about data when you are a populist Republican and mad/scared about black folk protesting?
Hopefully someone, somewhere will put a stop to this nonsense and tell the self-important Republicans to stay away and let Harris County recover somehow. Trust me when I say this, your platform isn’t important to the electoral process.
For those of us that do live here, stay away from people outside of your family, wash your hands, and wear a damn mask.
This needed to be said. Thanks. Oh, and there are lots of dumass Dems too. Viola!
The Texas GOP has found a way to implement voter suppression upon themselves.
Texas Tribune, Joe Strausss, Edd Emmett. I recall other old Chron bloggers like Craig Yates and Bob Cavendar (? oil guy that was afraid of hurricanes), Chris Ladd that started out fronting as conservatives and went full crazy liberal as they bashed Hillary and propped up Obama. Dwight Silverman honed his shadow banning and doxxing became the norm.
Looks like time is up. Must be something about that nexus What could it be…whatever could it be?
It sure is a hell of a note when Democrats care more about saving Republican lives than the RPT does.
Republicans had SD conventions in person without incident. I don’t think dems are near as worried about our health as they are wanting to interfere with our political process.
Well, y’all got your online convention. How do you like it?