AUSTIN, Texas — Over the weekend, Texas Republicans held their first in-person convention in four years. Attendance was down, but those who came to Houston ended up passing a platform that moves their party even further to the right.
Among their actions was support for a measure saying President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.
“Texas Republicans rightly have no faith in the 2020 election results and we don’t care how many times the elites tell us we have to. The Texas Republican Party is raising record funds for election integrity, and we’ve made election integrity a top priority to ensure Texas never goes the way of Pennsylvania, Georgia, or Arizona. We refuse to let Democrats rig the elections in 2022 or 2024,” Matt Rinaldi, the Republican Party of Texas Chairman, said in a statement.
Election officials have never found any evidence of voter fraud.
“There has not been any evidence that the 2020 election was fraudulent,” said Jeronimo Cortina, PhD, associate professor with the University of Houston. “To the country, many experts, electoral experts, say that the 2020 election was one of the most transparent and most observed elections in the modern history of the United States. So it’s mind-boggling to see that we’re still debating if 2020 was a fraudulent election.”
This November, Gov. Greg Abbott hopes to earn a third term. He is up against Democrat Beto O’Rourke. Abbott did not make an appearance at the convention. He instead held an event at a nearby restaurant. One political science professor says he might be trying to distance himself from the far-right.
“Regardless of Gov. Abbott’s positions, he has to have a little bit of political room to maneuver and also to try to cater or at least go after those moderate republicans that still exist within the Republican party. So it’s a very tight balance and play that he has to do," said Cortina. "Elections are coming up. If Gov. Abbott goes and embraces this faction of the Republican Party, he’s going to be risking alienating more moderate Republicans and more moderate independent voters that may either not vote or may support, for example in this case, Beto O’Rourke in the gubernatorial race.”
Sen. John Cornyn’s, R-Texas, decision to work with Democrats on stricter gun laws resulted in a chorus of boos as he spoke to the convention.
“Just the fact that he was cooperating in trying to write these laws to come to some kind of consensus meant that he was a traitor to those members of the party that are most extreme on this issue,” said Dr. Jennifer R. Mercieca, professor at Texas A&M University.
In the 2022 Platform, the Texas GOP defines homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle choice,” urges lawmakers to abolish abortion and supports “incremental steps” to getting rid of property taxes.
RELATED: Committee split on 'abnormal' label for homosexuality
"When I looked down the platform, I saw a lot of words like 'stop,' and 'ban,' and 'protect.' Words that are designed to feed into this language of war, that we have to defend something... And a lot of it was geared toward protecting and saving children, although not from guns," said Dr. Mercieca. "It's a very extreme platform that I don't think a lot of Republicans would really sort of look at and say, 'Oh yeah, that represents the issues that I'm most concerned about.' But at the same time, it's designed to get those voters to care about those issues. It's really designed to appeal to their sense of needing to defend."
It’s worth noting that party platforms are mission statements, rather than legal doctrines. And in Texas, they’ve long reflected the opinions of the most activist wings of the parties.