Quite frankly, Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, is either completely bananas or he's willing to exploit every crazy person in Texas for his own political advantage. In either case, he's a threat to the national rationality. You may recall that Abbott announced his willingness to put the armed forces of Texas on the line to protect his state's citizens from their paranoid fantasies concerning a U.S. military exercise called Jade Helm. Now, it's been revealed that Abbott's first impulse was to be more sane than his constituents, but that, quickly, he decided to get right with the nutbags.

"Rest assured, this is not a martial law exercise," his office responded in emails and letters signed by Dede Keith, deputy director of Abbott's constituent communication division. "Law enforcement agencies in the training areas are fully aware of the exercise and will be coordinating with military officials to ensure the safety of residents and exercise participants."

My dear young man, that simply is not done.

About 270 calls, letters and emails voiced opposition to the Jade Helm 15 exercise, with all but a hundred coming before Abbott's letter to the Texas State Guard. "Please do what you can to keep military ops on military bases. Scramble the Texas Air National Guard if need be. Citizens of Texas don't need further, and continued intimidation from our Marxist president," wrote a San Antonio man. A Deer Park woman wondered, "Is there anything we can do to prepare, other than lock and load?" A Hemphill woman mentioned the rumor of closed Wal-Marts "being prepared to be detention camps." The operation advertised as a military exercise "could turn into a full fledged effort by the Federal Government to take guns away from law abiding citizens," wrote a Houston woman, who asked Abbott what he planned to do about it.

If there is a clearer symptom of the prion disease that has eaten away at the higher functions of the Republican party, I can't think of one. Nobody with a functioning brain would consider Abbott a squish. After, as the Texas attorney-general, he led the charge behind the case that allowed the Supreme Court to gut the Voting Rights Act and that allowed John Roberts to declare the Day of Jubilee. Yet, almost immediately, he felt obligated to abandon rationality in order to appease an audience of angry shut-ins and talk-radio hysterics, which made him a figure of national ridicule. Every major Republican candidate for any office is wedged into exactly the same corner. This is more than a political conundrum. It's a goddamn national crisis.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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