Abbott’s anti-mandate mandate also conflicts with the classic conservative tradition in this state and elsewhere of the primacy of local control. Since Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton have ruled the Capitol roost, such rank hypocrisy is par for the course. Still, it’s one thing when the governor ignores local control over the use of plastic bags, cutting down trees or restricting fracking within the city limits; it’s another when thousands of lives are at stake in a global pandemic.
“This prohibition against vaccine mandates is like as if the governor were telling me that I can’t issue an order to evacuate the coastal areas when a hurricane is barreling toward us,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said at a news conference. (Abbott probably wouldn’t hesitate to do even that if he saw some sort of political advantage.)
What’s infuriating during these difficult times is that the governor’s swerve to the hard right on a number of issues during a legislative session seemingly without end is pure (or, rather, impure) politics. Personally and politically over the years, Abbott has been relatively moderate — compared, that is, to the ideologues who have taken over the GOP — but now that two extremist challengers to his political future have cropped up, the governor has veered to the fence-line verge of the political highway.
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