Cotton Pickin' Texans A Youtube Video Idea?
Most of us know that the governing philosophy underlying Texas so-called "conservatism" is at least 100 years old. It was formed during a time when Texas was governed by a lot of wealthy land-owners, when there was a not-so-large (but white) middle class, and where poor whites, Afro-Americans, and Latinos were either shirt-sleeve workers in town, poor farmers, share-croppers, or migrant labor.
A lot of the Tea-publicans are still operating under these assumptions, despite the fact that the Lone Star State has become urbanized, industrialized, has a (currently threatened) middle class, and is struggling to stay afloat in a world economy where the most advanced countries have skilled and educated workforces.
I don't remember that the current crop of Republicans, particularly Tea-b@ggers, have thought about the consequences and the changes in the Texas economy. Texas is a lot bigger than it was back when Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, farming and ranching have diminished in importance (Not to mention that we are again undergoing a drought), and most of those tenant-farm and migrant-labor jobs have gone away. Yet Tea-publicans are still making noises about cutting unemployment benefits and think cavalierly (if at all) about former middle-class and comfortable working-class Texans being thrown into an economic death spiral.
It seems like the baggers are licking their chops and waiting for former teachers, ex-realtors, onetime computer porgrammers to meekly head to the cotton fields and start picking cotton.
That might make an interesting attack video--showing former members of the middle class doing old-fashioned field-work and also quizzing them and folks on the street as to whether they'd want to do likewise.
