Abbott/Dead Armadillos: An Ongoing Series (Part 4 - Tribune Belatedly Recognizes Obvious)

"So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth."
Revelation 3:16

Texas Tribune this morning:

Greg Abbott has had a rough month. The civil liberties wing of the governor’s Republican Party, with its focus on individual freedom and economics, is lobbing rotten tomatoes his way — increasingly agitated by his attempts to cage the coronavirus with a new series of behavioral restrictions.

Abbott is simultaneously building the case for higher office for some of the state Democratic Party’s future stars — people in the local offices he relied on in the first stages of the pandemic, then cut off from power and now is trying to blame for the failures of his own response to the coronavirus.

If doing a good job is the best politics, Abbott should be making it harder for Texans to see his opponents in either party as future leaders — and certainly not as potential challengers.

Instead, he’s making it easier.

The whole Tribune piece is unintentionally hilarious. Mostly because everything Ross Ramsey observes has been blindingly obvious for MONTHS. But, you know, way to go Ross!

(We guess.)

As we explained almost three months ago:

Abbott's already pissed off the stay-home-forever crowd. Now, he's pissing of a not-insignificant part of his base. He's creating a rather difficult needle to thread for himself.

Nothing that happened this morning is new. Still, given the degree to which he fancies himself the gatekeeper of socially acceptable opinion, for Ross Ramsey to state this publicly is noteworthy. Expect Rice University professor Mark Jones to follow suit shortly.

Bottom Line: None of this is actually "news," but the perception becoming this widespread ain't good for the incumbent.