[WARNING: Adult Language]
MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes said Friday on “Deadline” that Republicans in Texas were “batshit crazy” while discussing a school official telling teachers in order to comply with a new state law that “if you have a book on the Holocaust,” you also have one that has an opposing view.
Sykes said, “The focus ought to be on the law and the fact that the teachers are terrified. They don’t know what’s going to happen. You know, conservative legislators used to talk a lot about the unintended consequences of legislation. What are the unintended consequences of this heavy-handed legislation? That teachers don’t know what books they can assign. So, here we have the party of small government in the business of banning ideas, of banning books.”
He continued, “You know, I am actually old enough, Nicolle, maybe you can help me with this. I mean, I know that Republicans in Texas have been conservative for a long time, but there was a time when conservative Republicans in Texas were not absolutely batshit crazy. I think this is the question.”
Sykes added, “I mean, Texas Republicans used to be kind of respectable. You had the Bushes, people like John Connally who switched parties. You had, you know, a variety of folks. Now we are almost in this competition between. I don’t know, is it a competition between Florida, Arizona, and Texas, who can be the most MAGA, who can play the most hair-on-fire culture war games? Because that seems to be this race to the bottom that we’re talking about here.”
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