Say you’re the governor of a state.
Your political party’s bumbling left millions of your voters without electricity, heat or water during a horrific winter storm.
Several dozen of them died, a number that’s minuscule in a state of nearly 30 million people. Unless, of course, you’re one ohem or you love someone who’s one of them.
You will never hear so many statements of state superiority in any other state in the Union. Well, maybe in New Jersey, but that’s just silly.
So despite all these feelings of greatness, Texans are pretty upset these days.
Since Governor Greg Abbott is hoping to run for re-election next year, he needed to do something to change the topic. What could possibly be better for that purpose than telling Texans they no longer needed to do something the hated federal government was telling them to do?
It gets worse. In addition to telling people they no longer need to wear masks, Abbott removed all restrictions on the way businesses operate. Restaurants, bars, theaters are all free to open at full capacity with no social distancing at all.
I don’t know about you, but that sure makes me want to go out an have a beer — in New Mexico.
Before you say that people who are worried about the coronavirus can just stay home and avoid people, it isn’t that easy. With the governor saying Texas is “100 percent open,” many employers will tell their employees to come to work or lose their jobs.
It’s similar to what happened last spring, when people just couldn’t stay home long enough to get the spread of the virus under control. Of course the problem there was that there was no national leadership. The former president never told Americans that they must wear masks. He said it might help, but it was a matter of personal freedom.
The irony of it is that if Trump had done the right thing in March 2020, he probably would have been re-elected. Voters seemed to forgive everything else about him, but they couldn’t get past the pandemic.
It’s a shame Abbott and other Republican governors didn’t learn a lesson from that.