“Abbott wanted to offer an easy name to motion that could possibly be simply communicated to hundreds of thousands of Texans,” the editorial board
“Abbott wanted to offer an easy name to motion that could possibly be simply communicated to hundreds of thousands of Texans,” the editorial board of the Austin American-Statesman argued following Mr. Abbott’s govt order on Tuesday. “As a substitute,” they wrote, “he danced round with semantics.”
If Texans have struggled to pin down Mr. Abbott’s view on the virus, their lieutenant governor has left no uncertainty about his personal. Certainly, People who recurrently tune into Fox Information typically know the place Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick stands on any given subject, and the coronavirus has been no exception. On March 24, Mr. Patrick joined Tucker Carlson’s present to emphasize the necessity for People to “get again to work” and “again to residing” or threat financial collapse. He stated that grandparents like him have been keen to threat “survival” with a purpose to preserve a robust American financial system for his or her kids and grandchildren.
Previously, Mr. Patrick’s brash type has proved helpful to Mr. Abbott, permitting the lieutenant governor to turn into the face of polarizing points even when Mr. Abbott, the temperamental inverse of Mr. Patrick, would possibly help them himself. Ask Texans in regards to the so-called toilet invoice of 2017, laws that may have restricted the restrooms that transgender individuals may use, they usually’ll keep in mind Mr. Patrick as its champion, the man who held information conferences and promoted it on cable information. Much less memorable in these scenes is Mr. Abbott, who regardless of taking nice care to telegraph his reluctance, and by no means meaningfully opining by some means, finally agreed to name a particular session to think about the invoice.
Right now, nonetheless, somewhat than providing political cowl, Mr. Patrick’s sturdy positions serve principally to spotlight the governor’s strained pursuit of center floor. It’s not that Mr. Abbott has been absent. Lots of his selections have elicited bipartisan reward, together with asking well being insurers to waive prices of coronavirus testing and telemedicine visits, requesting the growth of Supplemental Vitamin Help Program advantages to drive-through eating places, and growing hospital capability.
However earlier than Tuesday, in tossing vital selections like stay-at-home orders to the native degree, Mr. Abbott left county officers to scramble for steerage on tips on how to gradual the virus’s unfold when strict social-distancing insurance policies have been in place in, say, Dallas County, however individuals have been allowed to maneuver freely in Collin County subsequent door. The outcome, critics say, has been a muddled imaginative and prescient for the way Texans ought to confront this disaster exactly when readability is most wanted.
“Trump’s greatest failing has been in sending combined messages from the start of the coronavirus pandemic,” stated Mustafa Tameez, a Democratic strategist primarily based in Houston. Abbott, he argued, has performed the identical. “At the very least with Dan Patrick you recognize the place he stands.”