Does TX Gov. Abbott Have The (Far) Right Stuff To Be President?

DALLAS —A contest is shaping up to see who can steer their constituents farthest to the right, and Gov. Greg Abbott is in it to win it.

Not content to sign one of the most restrictive abortion bills into law less than a month ago, or to crusade for making Texas the hardest state to vote in anywhere in the nation, the governor intends to sign a bill any day that allows Texans to carry firearms without a license.

That would already be a busy day at the zoo for Curious George, but Abbott is just getting warmed up. Monday, he joined his rival for the title of America's most arch-conservative lawmaker, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a battle to prevent cruise lines from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccinations as a prerequisite to booking passage.

He's also all but promised a special session which will make it harder for transgender kids to play school sports and a bill to prevent social media from restricting conspiracy theories on their sites.

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That's still not enough. Thursday, Abbott revived the notion that the Lone Star State needs a wall to keep illegal aliens on their side of the border. Never mind that he may not actually have the authority to build such a wall, based on the fact at least some of the land in question belongs to state and federal governments, while other bits belong to private citizens.

This is not about what can or will happen. It's about what should happen, in the view of those who fear they will soon be speaking Spanish, praying the rosary or face mandated Mariachi Mondays at work.

At a Del Rio summit on border security, Abbott called the situation a humanitarian crisis, and blamed President Joe Biden for causing the mess.

Just before the meeting, he told Breitbart Texas that “The influx across the border is out of control, and the Biden Administration has shown that is not going to step up and do its job,” said the governor said. “And amidst reports of even more people coming in across the border, we know we have to step up and do more.”

Then Abbott served up the special on today's menu: red meat.“What people have seen in videos across the country seems to be the Biden Administration welcoming these people to the United States. We won’t be sending that message,” the governor vowed. “If you come to Texas, you’re subject to being arrested. You’re not going to have a pathway to roam the country. You’re going to have a pathway directly into a jail cell.”

It is true, according to CNN, that more migrants have attempted to cross the border in 2021 than in the previous year. But, according to reports, that number is always in flux, and last year's decline may easily have had as much to do with the pandemic as with who was sitting in the Oval Office.

What is true is that the current administration is using a law on the books referenced by the previous administration to hastily expel migrants who appear at border crossings between the US and Mexico. Typically, those are families and single adults.

In February, the network reports, the majority of migrants who approached were immediately repelled, although some tried a second time or more. The number of unaccompanied children is on the rise. According to statistics, more than 9,200 arrests of minors were made in February by the US Border Patrol, an increase from 5,694 in January.

Illegal crossings have also become more common because of Trump-era policies that made it tougher to legally enter the country, apply for and receive citizenship. That, compounded by how hard Latin American countries were hit by the pandemic, makes for what truly is a humanitarian crisis.

Using the situation to carve a political divide may help Abbott win re-election next year and ultimately raise his chances of doing what George W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson did — turning in his Texas spurs for the seal of the president of the United States.

Sure, he might do so at the expense of Texans who are less safe from gun violence, more likely to have to travel outside the state for pregnancy counseling or more likely to catch or spread COVID-19 on a cruise line. But that's just the price of doing business in Texas.

As for illegal immigrants, why bother seeking any more nuanced solution when your constituents have been convinced that these people are nothing but another country's refuse — not only poor and uneducated, but unskilled, unsavory, criminals and drug mules.

By Abbott's reasoning, the best solution is to build a wall between people. He chooses hot-button issues like gun reform, a woman's right to choose and public safety versus a wide-open economy because he knows that's what his constituents have been told they should want.

Of course building walls, whether ideological, brick and mortar or out of wire does not solve problems. They literally stop people from addressing their problems. Had Abbott been President in 1860, he might have proposed a wall to divide the slave states from the free ones.

It would probably have been pretty popular then, too.

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