How Two Billionaire Preachers Remade Texas Politics

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How Two Billionaire Preachers Remade Texas Politics

They control Republican politics in the state. Now they’re poised to take their theocratic agenda nationwide.
GIFT www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/magazine/texas-politics-billionaire-preachers.html?unlocked_article_code=1.PU4.HgIc.Ju-r357vvOq9&smid=url-share 

Over the past decade, the pair have built the most powerful political machine in Texas — a network of think-tanks, media organizations, political-action committees and nonprofits that work in lock step to purge the Legislature of Republicans whose votes they can’t rely on. Cycle after cycle, their relentless maneuvering has pushed the Statehouse so far to the right that consultants like to joke that Karl Rove couldn’t win a local race these days. Brandon Darby, the editor of Breitbart Texas, is one of several conservatives who has compared Dunn and Wilks to Russian oligarchs. “They go into other communities and unseat people unwilling to do their bidding,” he says. “You kiss the ring or you’re out.”

Like the Koch brothers, the Mercer family and other conservative billionaires, Dunn and Wilks want to slash regulations and taxes. Their endgame, however, is more radical: not just to limit the government but also to steer it toward Christian rule. “It’s hard to think of other megafunders in the country as big on the theocratic end of the spectrum,” says Peter Montgomery, who oversees the Right Wing Watch project at People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy group.

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i'm here and have never heard of these guys, but these stories are bonkers & scary as shit...

[neeps]

I've only heard of Dunn because Texas Monthly did an article on him a while back. That was scary, but the NYT article is terrifying.

For those who think you're safe in your blue states - they're coming for you too. From the NYT article.

The Convention of States Project takes its cues from Article V of the Constitution, which proposes two paths for constitutional amendments. The familiar path — a two-thirds vote in each chamber of Congress to be ratified by three-fourths of states — has been deployed successfully 27 times. The other path, which involves two-thirds of states passing resolutions to call for a constitutional convention, is rarely discussed and has never been used.

... nothing in Article V limits the scope of the laws that might be changed.



“It’s a gamble, but if it pays off, it would be the biggest opportunity ever for billionaires to transform the government,” Montgomery, the researcher of the religious right, said. The Mercer family and Koch-funded groups have also backed the effort. The Convention of States says that 19 states have passed its resolutions. To win over the remaining 15, the group has started to back primary challengers to Republicans who oppose them in states across the country. During a 2018 appearance on Fox, Meckler admitted that critics of the movement were getting at “something truthful” when they complained that the convention was “intended to reverse 115 years of progressivism. And we say, ‘Yes, it is.’”

[basilosaurus]

I live in a just barely shy of Muslim theocracy, and I have more freedoms than these guys want for women.

I think that's what strikes me the most, how much they'll fear monger about another religion when they're far more alike than different.

Control of women. Gloria be. World without end