德克萨斯州奥斯汀——多年来，这个美国最大保守州的共和党人在“保持德克萨斯州红色”的口号下取得了胜利，这是一项平息即将到来的蓝色浪潮的承诺，民主党人认为，鉴于人口结构的变化，这是不可避免的。
现在，这些人口转变已经到来，2020年的人口普查证实，该州变得更大、更郊区、更多样化。然而，今天共和党更贴切的口号可能是“让德州更红”
面对日益严峻的人口威胁，德州共和党人支持一系列突破界限的保守决策，大幅扩大持枪权、限制堕胎和收紧政策选举法律——管理一个已经非常右倾的州。
该党非但没有蹑手蹑脚地走向中间，安抚推动人口增长的倾向民主党的德州人，反而拥抱自己的基础，并誓言要利用新一轮的重新划分来确保2030年的情况保持不变——成为一个无论政治风向最终如何变化都保持攻势的国家模式。
共和党州长格雷格·阿博特(Greg Abbott)周二表示:“很明显，德克萨斯州是一个国家领导人，因为它关系到我们通过的法律和其他州遵循的法律。”。
阿博特将于明年竞选连任，他经常被提到可能是2024年总统候选人。周二，他签署了一项投票立法，赋予党派投票观察员权力，并禁止一系列措施，这些措施使在冠状病毒大流行期间，在民主党占多数的城市投票变得更加容易。共和党人辩称，新规则提高了选举的安全性，并推动了这些规则的通过，尽管民主党州议员逃离该州数周以阻止它们。
投票法几乎被另一项新的德克萨斯州法律的全国辩论所掩盖——这是全国最严厉的一套堕胎限制。通过在大多数情况下禁止这一程序，并对强奸和乱伦案件不留下任何例外，该州对1973年最高法院确立妇女堕胎权的罗伊诉韦德案发起了可能是迄今为止最强烈的威胁。
另一项新法律允许任何21岁及以上的德州人携带枪支，无需执照。其他立法禁止学校讲授机构种族主义，并限制该州自己的城市在警察经费、环境预算和面具授权方面做出决定。周二，阿博特指示立法者在本月晚些时候立法机构开会开始绘制新的投票地图时，再次尝试通过对跨性别学生运动员的限制。
在可预见的未来，这些政策胜利将得到巩固。由于共和党控制着立法机构的两院，该党将根据2020年的人口普查数据决定新的国会和州议会选区——寻求尽可能有利的边界，以便共和党在未来十年及以后能够占据州议会的多数席位。
新地图将不得不抵消看起来对德克萨斯州共和党人不利的人口普查数据。根据2020年的人口普查数据，该州的西班牙裔人口增长了近200万，占德克萨斯州总人口增长的一半。美联社VoteCast的一项选民调查显示，尽管共和党在拉美裔选民中的支持率有所上升，但在11月份，德克萨斯州每10名拉美裔选民中约有6人选择了民主党人乔·拜登，而不是共和党人唐纳德·特朗普。
共和党人也在郊区看到了警告信号。在休斯顿、达拉斯和奥斯汀以外的繁荣社区的推动下，该州拥有全国10个发展最快的城市中的4个。美联社VoteCast发现，在这些地方获得多年的共和党优势后，拜登将德克萨斯州郊区的选民与特朗普分开，并赢得了该州五个最大的县。
民主党人将不受约束的保守主义归咎于特朗普主义。这位前总统迎来了“一个更加活跃的新共和党。德州立法黑人核心小组副主席、民主党州众议员罗恩·雷诺兹说。
“奶牛离开了谷仓，很难把它放回去，”雷诺兹说，他所在的地区包括繁荣的休斯顿郊区。“他们必须娱乐，必须安抚，因为这些人对在共和党初选中投票感到兴奋。”
像雷诺兹这样的民主党人警告说，选民将会强烈反对。但他们几乎没有历史来支持这一点:共和党人在27年里没有输掉一场全州范围的竞选，并表示这是对保守主义的坚定承诺，而不是务实的妥协，保持了美国最长的选举连胜。
“如果有人预料到了这一点，那他们的想法就大错特错了，”2016年特朗普竞选团队在德克萨斯州的负责人科尔宾·卡斯特尔(Corbin Casteel)开玩笑说，任何关于人口普查数据可能会让该州的共和党人走向中间的想法。
更温和的德克萨斯州共和党人表示，过去关于改变人口统计数据以帮助民主党的声明被夸大了。“关于我们死亡的谣言被大大夸大了，”德克萨斯州东部纳科多契斯州众议员特拉维斯·克拉迪说。
“我们一直以非常强劲的数据取胜，”克拉迪补充道。“我不认为我们有尖锐、极端、右翼的立场。我认为我们一直在保守地治理。”
尽管如此，该党在不久前还是表现出了温和的能力。在2018年民主党浪潮席卷德克萨斯州和全国后，共和党召开了一次极其平静的立法会议，集中讨论了财产减税和公共教育等传统问题。
直到该党去年11月举行立法会议并在国会获得席位后，它才艰难地转向右翼——预计其成员未来最大的选举威胁是主要挑战，而不是被民主党人赶下台。
Clardy说:“我听说所有这些人口结构的变化都将赶上老白人的聚会，但我认为这并没有发生。“这些数字可能正在发生变化，但它们可能不会像人们想象的那样呈现趋势。”
这种向右翼的转变，最能说明问题的或许是前州最高法院大法官阿博特，他曾被认为对这项工作采取了更有分寸、更慎重、更有利于商业的态度，但最近比立法机构走得更远——尤其是在移民问题上。
州长最近命令州警察逮捕涉嫌非法入境的人，并指示一个州机构为德克萨斯州与墨西哥近1200英里(1930公里)的边境上2英里(3.2公里)的隔离墙支付2500万美元。
尚未有主要民主党人宣布反对艾伯特的候选人资格，尽管前总统候选人贝托·奥鲁克(Beto O’rourke)仍有可能参选，他在2018年的竞选中与得克萨斯州参议员特德·克鲁兹的支持率相差不到3个百分点。这位州长已经受到了前国会议员艾伦·韦斯特的主要挑战，艾伦·韦斯特曾是茶党的宠儿，因将民主党人比作纳粹而闻名。
卡斯特尔说，在保守价值观上加倍努力对德克萨斯州内外的共和党人都有好处。他指的是阿博特和另一位州长以及可能的2024年总统候选人，佛罗里达州共和党人罗恩·德桑蒂斯。这两个国家都通过愿意对抗不受欢迎的政策，如通用口罩授权，获得了全国的支持。尽管这两个州的民主党人坚称，州长们未能更加努力地抗击这一流行病，最终可能会危及他们连任的愿望——更不用说白宫了。
“他面临着很少有州长面临的情况，大流行和各种其他事情使保守派陷入困境，”卡斯特尔谈到艾伯特时说。“这是安全与自由的较量，他——还有像德桑蒂斯州长这样的人——他们把针穿得很好。我认为结果是不言自明的。”
Texas GOP bets on hard right turn amid changing demographics
AUSTIN, Texas -- Republicans in America's largest conservative state for years racked up victories under the slogan “Keep Texas Red,” a pledge to quash a coming blue wave that Democrats argued was inevitable given shifting demographics.
Now, those population transformations have arrived, with the 2020 census confirming that the state got bigger, more suburban and far more diverse. Yet a more apt state GOP rallying cry for today might be “Make Texas Even Redder."
Faced with increasingly dire demographic threats to their party’s dominance, Texas Republicans have championed a bevy of boundary-pushing conservative policymaking that dramatically expands gun rights, curbs abortions and tightenselectionlaws — steering a state that was already far to the right even more so.
Far from tiptoeing toward the middle to appease the Democratic-leaning Texans driving population growth, the party is embracing its base and vowing to use a new round of redistricting to ensure things stay that way through 2030 — becoming a national model for staying on the offensive no matter how political winds may eventually shift.
“Texas, obviously, is a national leader as it concerns the laws that we pass and other states follow,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is fond of vowing to make Texas the “freedom capital of America,” said Tuesday.
Abbott, who is up for reelection next year and often mentioned as a possible 2024 presidential contender, signed voting legislation Tuesday that empowers partisan poll watchers and prohibits a host of measures that made casting ballots easier in heavily Democratic cities amid the coronavirus pandemic. Republicans argue that the new rules boost election security and charged ahead to pass them, even as Democratic state lawmakers fled the state for weeks to block them.
The voting law was nearly overshadowed by national debate over another new Texas law — the nation's toughest set of abortion restrictions. By banning the procedure in most instances and leaving no exceptions for cases of rape and incest, the state has mounted perhaps the strongest threat yet to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing a woman's right to an abortion.
Another new law allows virtually any Texan age 21 and older to carry guns without licenses. Other legislation banned schools from teaching about institutional racism and limited the state’s own cities from making decisions on police funding, environmental budgeting and mask mandates. And on Tuesday, Abbott instructed lawmakers to once again try passing restrictions on transgender student athletes when the Legislature convenes later this month to begin drawing new voting maps.
These policy victories are poised to become cemented for the foreseeable future. Because Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature, the party will decide new congressional and statehouse districts based on 2020 census figures — seeking to make the boundaries as favorable as possible so the GOP can hold statehouse majorities for the next decade and beyond.
The new maps will have to counteract what looks to be unfavorable census data for Texas Republicans. The state's Hispanic population grew by nearly 2 million, according to 2020 census figures, accounting for half of Texas' total population increase. Even as the GOP made gains with Hispanic voters, about 6 in 10 Hispanics in Texas chose Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump in November, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of the electorate.
Republicans also see warning signs in the suburbs. The state is home to four of the nation’s 10 fastest-growing cities, fueled by booming communities outside Houston, Dallas and Austin. After years of GOP advantages in these places, Biden split suburban voters in Texas with Trump, AP VoteCast found, and won the state's five largest counties.
Democrats blame the unfettered conservativism on Trumpism. The former president ushered in “a new Republican Party that is more feisty. It’s more fringe," said Democratic state Rep. Ron Reynolds, vice chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus.
“The cow’s left the barn, and it’s hard to put it back,” said Reynolds, whose district includes booming suburban Houston. “They have to entertain and they have to appease because these are the people that are excited about voting in Republican primaries.”
Democrats like Reynolds warn there will be voter backlash. But they have little history to back that up: Republicans haven't lost a statewide race in 27 years and say it is a fierce commitment to conservativism, not pragmatic compromise, that has preserved the nation's longest electoral winning streak.
“If anyone expected that, their head is way too far up their, uh, philosophy,” Corbin Casteel, the Trump campaign’s Texas director in 2016, joked about any notion that census figures might make the state's Republicans move to the center.
Even more moderate Texas Republicans say past pronouncements about changing demographics helping Democrats were overblown. “The rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated,” said state Rep. Travis Clardy of Nacogdoches in east Texas.
“We keep winning with really strong numbers,” Clardy added. “I don’t think we’ve had strident, extreme, right-wing positions. I think we’ve governed conservatively.”
Still, the party has shown a capacity for moderation in the not-too-distant past. After a Democratic wave swept Texas and the nation in 2018, the GOP had an exceedingly quiet legislative session, focusing on traditional issues like property tax cuts and public education.
It was only after the party held the Legislature and gained seats in Congress last November that it turned hard right — anticipating that its members' biggest electoral threat going forward is primary challenges rather than being unseated by Democrats.
“I’ve heard that all this demographic change is going to catch up to the party of the old white people, but I don’t think it’s happened,” Clardy said. “The numbers may be changing, but they may not be trending the way they think that they are.”
The move to the right is perhaps best illustrated by Abbott, a former state Supreme Court justice who was once considered to have a more measured and deliberative, business-friendly approach to the job but has lately gone even further right than the Legislature — particularly on immigration.
The governor recently ordered state police to arrest people suspected of being in the country illegally and directed a state agency to pony up $25 million for 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of wall along Texas’ nearly 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) border with Mexico.
No major Democrat has yet announced a candidacy against Abbott, though former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke — who came within 3 percentage points of upsetting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 — still might. The governor has already drawn a primary challenge from former congressman Allen West, a onetime tea party darling known for likening Democrats to Nazis.
Casteel said doubling down on conservative values is working for Republicans in Texas and beyond. He pointed to Abbott and another governor and possible 2024 presidential candidate, Republican Ron DeSantis of Florida. Both have gained national followings by being willing to combat unpopular policies like universal mask mandates. That's despite Democrats in both states insisting the governors' failure to more strenuously battle the pandemic could ultimately jeopardize their aspirations for reelection — not to mention the White House.
“He’s faced circumstances that few governors have, with the pandemic and all sorts of other things that put conservatives in a tough bind,” Casteel said of Abbott. “It’s safety versus liberty and he — and folks like Gov. DeSantis — they’ve threaded that needle very nicely. And I think the results are speaking for themselves.”
