Andrew Ferguson has written a very entertaining article in the latest Weekly Standard on Bush-hatred and the liberal political culture of Austin. He gets everything just about right, including this:
[...]the feeling that runs through Texas liberalism--the feeling of being besieged, outgunned, impotent if not hopeless--is well-founded. Even paranoids are sometimes on to something. For nearly a century, Texas liberals shared the majority party in Texas, the Democratic party, with conservatives. It was an uneasy alliance but it satisfied both factions with separate spheres of influence. No more. The good news for Texas progressives is that they've finally purged the Democratic party of right-wingers and now have it all to themselves. The bad news is that the party is roughly the size of a well-attended kegger. And it promises to stay that way for the next generation.Be sure to read the whole thing, especially if, like me, you're stuck in this self-important, over-crowded, slacker-proud madhouse on the Colorado.
The change is notable not only for its comprehensiveness but for the rapidity with which it took place. In Texas, the first Republican since Reconstruction took statewide office in 1978. Within 20 years, all 22 statewide offices were held by Republicans. Unbudgeable, decades-old majorities in both houses of the Texas legislature vaporized just as quickly. You can't blame Texas liberals for being disoriented. "There's something about being so concentrated ideologically that makes them more strident than they'd be under other circumstances," Will Lutz, managing editor of a political newsletter called The Lone Star Report, told [Ferguson] earlier this month.