As Texas Goes...: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda ~ by Gail Collins, 2012, politics
Gail Collins declares that "what happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas anymore." Not until she visited Texas, that proud state of big oil and bigger ambitions, did Gail Collins, the best-selling author and columnist for the New York Times, realize that she had missed the one place that mattered most in America’s political landscape. Raised in Ohio, Collins had previously seen the American fundamental divide as a war between the Republican heartland and its two liberal coasts. But the real story, she came to see, was in Texas, where Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Perry had created a conservative political agenda that is now sweeping the country and defining our national identity. Through its vigorous support of banking deregulation, lax environmental standards, and draconian tax cuts, through its fierce championing of states rights, gun ownership, and, of course, sexual abstinence, Texas, with Governor Rick Perry’s presidential ambitions, has become the bellwether of a far-reaching national movement that continues to have profound social and economic consequences for us all. Like it or not, as Texas goes, so goes the nation.
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4 comments:
I also have a copy of "How Texas goes" but I've lost it in the piles that were moved in preparation for the wooden floors to be installed. That seems to be a pattern in my life, right?
Texas has some really scary education reforms and textbooks! I think this book would probably make me mad! :-)
Helen, I've read only about a dozen pages so far, and it has already angered and frustrated me. Here's a sample from page 7:
"I was wandering around, trying to figure out how Texas inspired a national education law which the politicians in Texas now denounce on an almost hourly basis, or why a state that would get more economic benefit than anybody from the health care reform law is so determined to repeal the health care reform law."
Sounds like an interesting read. Enjoy!
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