Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore
There are worse issues about Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick than his style in shirts.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has lengthy wielded his energy within the Texas Capital like a cudgel, utilizing procedural maneuvers to grant himself ever extra management of the state Senate and sidelining those that don’t step according to a far-right agenda steeped in homophobia, immigrant bashing and white nationalism.
So empowered, Patrick has tried to power by means of a number of the most excessive right-wing laws within the historical past of the state. Typically he is met with success, as with Texas’ merciless six-week abortion ban, others he is been shot down within the extra average Home, as together with his invoice that may have barred transgender folks from public restrooms.
Repugnant to say the least, however Patrick’s conduct through the impeachment trial of Texas Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton on public corruption costs reveals that there’s actually no backside.
First, Patrick declared that he was appropriate to preside over the method regardless that he’d accepted $3 million in marketing campaign contributions from certainly one of Paxton’s greatest backers. Nope, nothing sleazy about that in any respect, he assured these paying consideration.
Whereas Patrick was capable of placed on his greatest conduct in the course of the trial, performing within the position of neutral decide at the least as efficiently as TV comic Steve Harvey, he didn’t take lengthy to tell us that it was rigged from day one.
“The speaker and his workforce rammed by means of the primary impeachment of a statewide official in Texas in over 100 years whereas paying no consideration to the precedent that the Home set in each different impeachment earlier than,” Patrick claimed in a fiery speech after his Senate voted in opposition to bouncing his buddy Paxton out on his ass.
Patrick went on to mock the Home’s impeachment managers, then declared that he’d search a constitutional modification to stop such a trial from taking place once more. Voters might relaxation assured that he’d additionally demand a “full audit” of how a lot cash the Home had burned by means of making an attempt to carry the AG accountable.
Since then, Patrick has been locked in a shit-slinging disagreement with Home Speaker Dade Phelan over the impeachment — one which spilled over into the Texas Legislature’s marathon particular periods. Along with calling Phelan “revolting, repulsive and repugnant,” Patrick has demanded that the speaker resign in disgrace.
Whereas Patrick might have sewn up his absolute management over the Texas Senate, his conduct across the impeachment trial reveals he’s no public servant. Certainly, it reveals he doesn’t even have the political clout to see his agenda make it by means of the Home. Minus these issues, it must be abundantly clear that, all alongside, that Patrick has been nothing however a loudmouth, a bully and a humiliation. Oh, yeah, and Assclown of the Yr.
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