Party (convention) Time in the Lone Star State

It's official: the Texas Republican Party hates everything. They held their semi-annual convention in San Antonio last weekend and voted on a platform that spells out everything they're against. Well, not everything, but the things that will get them points among the religious right wing base that keeps them in office - at least temporarily.

Among the things they're officially against include:

• amnesty for illegal immigrants
• people who hire illegal immigrants
• children of illegal immigrants
• marriage (other than the straight kind)
• the morrning after pill
• abortion

I still don't get their reasoning. They're against abortion, but also against the class of people least likely to have or need one - gays. They want to build a wall along our borders, but want to kick out the people we're going to need to build it. And now, for the first time ever, they want to take away being born into citizenship in this country.

For a play-by-play of the Republican Convention, check out the Texas Safety Forum, which liveblogged it. Vince Leibowitz from Capitol Annex also did a pretty good synopsis of his view from the left bleachers.

The Texas Democratic Party Convention is being held this weekend in Fort Worth. Hopefully, their platform will demonstrate that they're for something, like Texans, rather than against everything.

Lot's of people will be liveblogging the Dems' Convention from the floor of the convention center (I know of at least eight). Check out the Texas Bloggers Caucus for links to these sites, as well as schedules and convention news.

Hopefully next week, we voters will have a clear picture of which party actually represents the people of Texas, rather than a small, powerful group whose only interest is in self-preservation.