How We Take it Back

Face it, 2010 was a horrible year for the Democratic Party. Not just in Texas. Everywhere. A whole bunch of those people who came out to vote in 2008, giving Democrats a near majority in the Texas State House, and majorities in both houses of Congress in DC as well as the Presidency, stayed home last year.

But not the TEA Party. The TEA Party came out in droves in the Republican Primary and then in the General Election. The TEA Party then set the rules of discussion and frightened center right Republicans into making a right turn in their voting.

The TEA Party then went one step further in Texas. They led the charge against public education and refused to fund it fully as they are directed to do in the Texas Constitution.

TEA Partiers like to talk about the trickle-down effect when they vote to slash spending but not one single vote to increase revenue. Well there is a new type of trickle-down effect that we can consider now, one that does not bode well for Republicans getting a repeat performance in the 2012 elections.

When the TEA Party embarked on its mission to ruin public education they may just have set out on a path for their own demise. A demise that started when the legislature voted to under fund public education, but will come true when the shocks and aftershocks radiate out away from the capitol building and reach every school district, every school within them and every classroom in every school.

And from there to individual homes in Texas. To families. To children and their parents. Parents who vote.

Parents are not going to appreciate being nickel and dimed for every extra service that their children participate in. They’re not going to like it when they see their children printing out their homework assignments at home because there is no money for copying services on campuses anymore. They’re going to go absolutely crazy when  their children are asked to bring in  a ream of printer paper or throw a few bucks into the kitty so a printer cartridge can be purchased.

And they are going to hate it when they see their children have to sit in overcrowded classrooms, or rather, stand up along the walls.

And they are going to know who is to blame for all of this, all of this that started in Austin but came home to roost in their own homes and affected their own families.

How do we take it back? We take it back by relying on a sure thing: people here in Texas love public education. They love it. And they will rise with righteous wrath next year and make their displeasure known at the polls.

It has to happen, it just has to.

Because if it doesn’t, if it doesn’t, then we are in for it.