It’s 31 lawsuits — and counting — for Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general who’s about to become the state’s next governor.

Abbott has sued President Obama over the president’s recent executive order that protects about 5 million illegal immigrants from immediate deportation. He made good on his campaign promise to sue Obama over this issue.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/12/03/greg-abbott-sues-over-executive-action-immigration/

I must pose some inquiries about this action.

First, how much are these lawsuits costing the state? It strikes me that Abbott — a self-proclaimed fiscally conservative Republican — is running up an incalculable legal tab as he challenges the president over immigration, health care reform and whatever else.

Second, as a Republican who has support tort reform efforts to rein in the cost of court settlements, he’s becoming one of those dreaded plaintiff’s lawyers Republican officeholders have loved to hate. We’ve all heard the mantra that Democrats are plaintiff-friendly, while Republicans look out for the interests of defendants in civil court proceedings. Texans seem to have sided with the GOP on that one, electing an all-Republican state Supreme Court, which rules fairly routinely in favor of business interests who’ve been sued by plaintiffs.

And third, does Abbott really have a case against the president or is he being pressured by the TEA party wing of the GOP to do something — dammit! — to stick it in Barack Obama’s ear? The Texas Tribune reports: “‘It’s ill advised. I don’t think he has standing. He gets the basic terminology wrong, and he protests too much when he says he’s not politicizing it, because all of it is simply about the politics of it,’ said Michael Olivas, an immigration lawyer and professor at the University of Houston. ‘He characterizes what the president did as an executive order — it is not an executive order. It’s executive action.'”

I didn’t used to consider Abbott to be a fiery conservative. I’ve long thought of him as a more thoughtful politician. He could be feeling the heat from the right wing of his party to carry through with his campaign pledge to sue the president one more time.

Well, he’s got 31 lawsuits in the can already. For my money, enough is enough.