A friend and former colleague recently invoked the memory of the late Teel Bivins, a state senator from Amarillo who was fond of suggesting that Republican politicians occasionally engage in a form of political cannibalism.
“They eat their young,” Bivins once said of his fellow Republican legislators, referring to the every-10-year exercise called “redistricting.”
Bivins isn’t around to see what has become of his once-glorious political party. I imagine he would be, well, aghast at the sight of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton being impeached and now awaiting trial in the Texas Senate.
Bivins was long gone from this good Earth when Paxton was elected AG. I don’t recall Bivins being cut from the same slimy cloth that produced the MAGA cult that is backing Paxton. He was more of a “traditional conservative,” favoring private property ownership, low taxes and fiscal restraint.
But, yes, the GOP is “eating its young” at this moment as the party grapples with the consequences of the stunning and overwhelming vote in the Texas House to impeach Paxton over a series of allegations, involving bribery, abuse of power and something called “official corruption.”
Collin County’s GOP House delegation all voted to impeach Paxton, who also hails from Collin County. How can that possibly bode well for the AG? It can’t … I tell ya!
Thus, the Republican cannibals are picking away at the bones of an AG who’s been in some sort of legal difficulty ever since he took office in 2015.
I just hope they have concluded what many other Texans have done. Which is to say “enough is enough” with this clown.
There is no way to know what Teel Bivins would think, but my fondest hope of the man I knew pretty well would be that he, too, would be repulsed.
