Gov. Greg Abbott’s choice to nominate former state Rep. Nate Schatzline as a senior adviser on election coverage says as a lot concerning the path of Texas Republican politics because it does concerning the state’s lack of seriousness about free and honest elections.
Schatzline final week joined Abbott’s workplace, the place he’ll work on what the governor describes as “election integrity” coverage.
The appointment drops one of many Legislature’s most outspoken far-right tradition warriors in addition to an outspoken Christian Nationalist right into a place that’s prone to play a significant position in shaping future election laws.
Throughout his time within the Texas Home, Schatzline constructed a fame as a partisan bomb thrower who confirmed solely marginal curiosity in crafting critical laws. Amongst his best hits: referring to Islam as a “demise cult” poised to take over the US and bragging through the center of Texas’ most up-to-date measles outbreak that his youngsters’ faculty has one of many lowest vaccination charges within the state.
Schatzline’s divisive rhetoric issues as a result of election administration depends upon public confidence that the legal guidelines deal with everybody equally and aren’t being crafted as a part of an ideological campaign. This joker’s political model has been the other: he’s an attention-grabbing showboater who’s repeatedly sought to inject himself into Texas’ most polarizing cultural fights.
It’s arduous to see the appointment representing something apart from Abbott’s continued embrace of essentially the most excessive fringe of the state GOP and his continued push to marginalize the voting energy of Texans who don’t share his more and more unpopular agenda.
Schatzline has been featured on this column a number of instances for his outlandish claims and habits. Seems prefer it takes an assclown to totally embrace an assclown.
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