Morgan Wheatly

Shouts of spontaneous glee went up at the Enterprise office and around Texas last Tuesday when Gov. Rick Perry announced that he would not be seeking re-election next year. What a blessed day it was for Texas!

Perry has been in office longer than any other Texas governor, assuming the post in December 2000 when Gov. George W. Bush resigned after being elected president. Perry then won three full four-year terms of his own and put his indelible brand of conservatism on the state and on the Republican Party.

Your humble editor first met Perry while he was serving as Agriculture Commissioner in the 1990s, and the West Texas former Democrat appeared harmless enough at the time. But Perry’s politics seemed to harden after he became Lieutenant Governor in 1999 and then took ownership of the Governor’s Mansion.

Since the time after Reconstruction, Texas has had a constitutionally weak governor with the office holding very little power other than a bully pulpit and an occasional appointment of some state official. But Perry came into office at a time when the governor’s term was increased from two years to four years, and with three elections under his belt, Gov. “Good Hair” had the chance to appoint any positions that could be appointed, putting his people on every board and commission in the state and exercising greater than usual influence over the legislative process.

Throughout the last 13 years, Perry Republicans have led the state further and further to the right, which has not always been a good thing, and we can look to the state of our education system as just one example of conservatism gone too far.

Republicans have demanded accountability from and imposed “standards” on public schools and put in place testing that causes elementary students to have anxiety attacks and basically destroyed the classical education system that most of us grew up in. My mother, who spent 37 years of her life teaching, would have been miserable in the current education system, which does not demand student discipline but does demand that all students meet goals set by a group of pinheads in Austin instead of what their teachers and local authorities believe they need to know.

This last Legislature, with Perry’s blessing, reduced the number of end-of-course exams. But what needs to happen is the elimination of state testing altogether and let schools get back to the business of educating. Pursuing a political and social agenda is not a good formula for educating kids.

Perry Republicans have also developed austere budgets in order to cut taxes or avoid tax increases. Those are both admirable objectives; but after you cut something to the bone for two or three legislative sessions, you’re pretty soon cutting into the marrow or even amputating entire limbs.

This state has an obligation to educate its people. Our survival as a free republic depends on an educated citizenry, but two years ago Perry Republicans went “Jack the Ripper” on the education system and stripped $5 billion from public schools. Some funds were restored this spring, but it still wasn’t enough to keep many school districts – like Clarendon – from having to approve higher local taxes to deal with the cuts.

And the public schools’ woes are nothing new to the higher education system, which has been subjected to Republican assaults on funding for several years. Clarendon College along with other colleges and universities have been forced to pass the costs of education on to their students in the forms of higher fees and tuition rates. As a state, we benefit from an educated workforce that results from having affordable higher education opportunities. Unfortunately, Perry Republicans believe that the only one who benefits from your college degree is you and you should therefore be glad to mortgage your future with student loans in exchange for a diploma.

Perry Republicans also have little use for culture or the arts, and the budget hawks often turn their talons to these programs. Where Gov. Bush launched the Texas Courthouse Preservation Program – which restored the Donley County Courthouse, the current crop of Republicans a few years ago discussed defunding the Texas Historical Commission.

Perry also seems to have forgotten his West Texas roots while in office. Programs benefiting rural communities have atrophied, and our area too often seems to be forgotten among the state’s priorities. Our area Texas Department of Transportation offices seem to have been subjected to a lot of cuts, notably the elimination of many of our roadside parks; and yet Perry’s people have left him a legacy of beautifully decorated overpasses in urban areas.

Perry’s embarrassing attempt to run for president last year probably sealed his political career. It is not impossible that he won’t try it again in 2016, but let’s hope not.

Now the scramble begins to see who will be the new leader of the Texas Republicans. As the Enterprise goes to press, Ag Commissioner Todd Staples was about to appear at the Clarendon College Bairfield Activity Center as he begins his campaign to be Lieutenant Governor. And downstate, Greg Abbott and Tom Pauken were staking out their territory in the race to fill Perry’s post.

Let’s hope Perry’s successors will govern with an attitude of what is best for Texas and not just pursue a political ideology and social agenda at the expense of our state’s future.